Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.
Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
The best nations are those most widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations.
Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.
Honor and fortune exist for him who always recognizes the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in the presence of high causes.
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.
That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must have also the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose.
Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance,--what ample borrowers of eternity they are!
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character until seen with the shore or the ship.
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open.
Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold it's great proportions.
A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.
There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.
It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
When we can't piece together the puzzle of our own lives, remember the best view of a puzzle is from above. Let Him help put you together.
It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifferenceto death.
Throughout the ages there have always been those who have been willing to go beyond the norms and reach for that unknown and distant star.
...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.
A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray.
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student.
The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not.
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.
I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.
We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-estimated.
The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.
If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone.
The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.
We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present.
It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.[What is a sorrow? A feeling whose benefits have not yet been discovered]
Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.