Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?
So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory.
I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens.
When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.
When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.
Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble-dew, Steel-true and blade-straight, The great artificer made my mate.
To have suffered ... sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth and has to be learned in the fire.
Let first the onion flourish there, Rose among roots, the maiden-fair, Wine-scented and poetic soul Of the capacious salad bowl.
The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye.
It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.
Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces.
I smoke a pipe abroad, because To all cigars I much prefer it, And as I scorn you social laws, My choice has nothing to deter it.
Must we to bed indeed? Well then, Let us arise and go like men, And face with an undaunted tread The long black passage up to bed.
You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
A child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.
Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend.
You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others.
The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.
There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.
When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind.
No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.
A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious.
You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!
The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
Everyday life is a stimulating mixture of order and haphazardry. The sun rises and sets on schedule but the wind bloweth where it listeth.
There is no music like a little river's . . . It takes the mind out-of-doors . . . and . . . it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.
So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.
The child that is not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He is a naughty child, I'm sure-- Or else his dear Papa is poor.
Every child can remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
This profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock is not a drop scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of reality.
It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.
It is one of the worst things of sentiment that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that what is spoken.
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.
When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.
The San Francisco Stock Exchange was the place that continuously pumped up the savings of the lower classes into the pockets of the millionaires.
I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange - a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.
Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.
Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong.
There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.