Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.
Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.
Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.
Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.
No one is promiscuous in his way of dying. A man who has decided to hang himself will never jump in front of a train.
Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.
The mind is fast emancipating itself from the dominion of man and of matter. It has let loose fearful forces on the world.
A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.
Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.
A birthday is a good time to begin a new; throwing away the old habits, as you would old clothes, and never putting them again.
The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions.
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.
Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.
Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.
Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.
A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life.
Would Shakespeare and Raleigh have done their best, would that galaxy have shone so bright in the heavens had there been no Elizabeth on the throne?
Cities with all their advantages have something hostile to liberal learning, the seductions are so subtle and accost the senses so openly on all sides.
Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.
The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections.
The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.
Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.
The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.
A state, a community, caring first for all its children, providing amply for their spiritual as for their temporal well-being, has organized the primitive Eden.
Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life.
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them -- structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.
As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind.
There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy.
There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.
Like birds of passage, the instincts drift the soul adventurously beyond the horizon of sensible things, as if intent on convoying it to the mother country from whence it had flown.
Children are illuminated text-books, breviaries of doctrine, living bodies of divinity, open always and inviting their elders to peruse the characters inscribed on the lovely leaves.
My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.
When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and young people., he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence.
An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible.
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.
Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?
Genius has oftenest been the pariah of his time, the unhoused god whom none cared for, unnamed till they whom he first promoted, enriched and honored, found it honorable to own their benefactor.
Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us m human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly, nor need we but love them devotedly to become members of an immortal fraternity, superior to accident or change.
Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.
Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.
The finer literature, indeed, is characterized by a certain suffusion of the feminine flavor, the finer, the more ideal, thought plumed with sentiment; even science loves to spring from its feet, philosophy affect the clouds to inspire and edify.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.
Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers.
Nor do we accept, as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.
The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.