Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force.

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.

Human beings cannot endure the geological chaos they encounter under the soil of their own gardens.

The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or place.

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.

The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.

Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.

Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

The mandate we have as Jews is for the story of the Exodus from Egypt to be retold every generation.

There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.

Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.

It distresses me, this failure to keep pace with the leaders of thought, as they pass into oblivion.

While many alien species are harmless, others pose expensive threats to seas and fields and forests.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Every man is actually weak, and apparently strong. To himself, he seems weak; to others, formidable.

Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.

Great country, diminutive minds. America is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation.

No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.

The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go.

That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.

To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.

The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come.

The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.

With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the U.S.A. and China.

To have a quiet mind is to possess one's mind wholly; to have a calm spirit is to possess one's self.

Goodness often blossoms like roses on very rickety trellis-work, and beauty can grow out of nonsense.

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature.

A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.

People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.

Sure, we want to know what a president believes in... but that doesn't always mean he should tell us.

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