Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
Life is an apprenticeship to the constant renunciations, to the steady failure of our claims, our hopes, our powers, our liberty.
To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time.
Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.
Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.
Men don't achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won't criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.
Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.
Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium
If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.
Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me.
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and is lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe.
Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.
Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.
Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil.
Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant
Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.
True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result.
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.
To know where one is going and what one wishes - this is order ... to organize one's life to distribute one's time ... all this belong to and is included in the word order.
Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.
Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always--this is duty.
Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.
Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.