Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.
Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.
The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.
Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.
A man must be in sympathy with society around him, or else, not wish to be in sympathy with it. If neither of these two, he must be wretched.
If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.
Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Outside among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom.
The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.
We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.
The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorageis quicksand.
Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?
Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.
Let us replace sentimentalism by realism and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.
The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.
Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.
Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.
Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,-must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.
Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.
Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its unmaskers.
The moral sense is always supported by the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I know not how, in our world, any good would ever get done.
It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.
The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.
The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.
Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die."
How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!
We do not want actions, but men; not a chemical drop of water, but rain; the spirit that sheds and showers actions, countless, endless actions.
Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
If you follow the suburban fashion in building a sumptuous- looking house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap, dear house.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.
It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in.
When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.
Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.
Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess what good company you shall find there.
We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.
A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.
If a teacher have any opinion which he wishes to conceal, his pupils will become as fully indoctrinated into that as into any which he publishes.
The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.
In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.