Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.
I am 'too fiery'... yet I wish to be seen as I am and I would lose all rather than soften away anything.
Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty.
Some degree of expression is necessary for growth, but it should be little in proportion to the full life.
It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.
The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.
Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fullness of her joy.
Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.
I know of no inquiry which the impulses of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue.
... the Power who gave a power, by its mere existence, signifies that it must be brought out towards perfection.
The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.
It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.
Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.
Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.
The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.
Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.
The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose.
Not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that woman was made for man.
It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy
It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.
All greatness affects different minds, each in its own particular kind, and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.
Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual.
As to marriage, I think the intercourse of heart and mind may be fully enjoyed without entering into this partnership of daily life.
Spirits that have once been sincerely united and tended together a sacred flame, never become entirely stranger to one another's life.
I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening.
Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.
I should never stand alone in this desert world, but that manna would drop from heaven, if I would but rise with every rising sun to gather it.
When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.
After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, 'I too am beautiful!' ... In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise.
With the intellect I always have always shall overcome, but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life Oh my God! shall the life never be sweet!
Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.
Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
Union is only possible to those who are units. To be fit for relations in time, souls, whether of man or woman, must be able to do without them in the spirit.
Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.
Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural.
To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.
there is such a rebound from parental influence that it generally seems that the child makes use of the directions given by the parent only to avoid the prescribed path.
Truth is the nursing mother of genius. No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance without becoming original.
Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.
It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see I think that is enough to say about them.
Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.
All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it.
If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.