Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.
A boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.
History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.
As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.
The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.
American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.
The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.
Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.
The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.
Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.
[Adams] supposed that, except musicians, everyone thought Beethoven a bore, as every one except mathematicians thought mathematics a bore.
I hate photographs abstractly, because they have given me more ideas perversely and immovably wrong, than I ever should get by imagination.
Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them.
Charles Sumner's mind had reached the calm of WATER which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contains nothing but itself.
All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people
Laplace would have found it child's-play to fix a ratio of progression in mathematical science between Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton and himself
Every one must bear his own universe, and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.
The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.
The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.
American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.
I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.
The social side of Washington was to be taken for granted as three-fourths of existence. Politics and reform became the detail, and waltzing the profession
By nature, man is lazy, working only under compulsion; and when he is strong we will always live, as far as he can, upon the labor or the property of the weak.
One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
Even theologians, even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God.
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.
Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont Saint Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other.
A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.
He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.
Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.
Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.
The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.
No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.
In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.
Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.
As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking for a round century before going further.
My rule in making up examination questions is to ask questions which I can't myself answer. It astounds me to see how some of my students answer questions which would play the deuce with me.
All State education is a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes.
A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly