Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The longing for a very garish kind of success seems as widespread among writers as among investment bankers.
Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.
Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation.
To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends her all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.
But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.
I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.
Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.
Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.
It really is considered one of the blessings of previous mates which you could manage being silly with them.
Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.
[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.
Cities of mortals woe-begone Fantastic care derides, But in the serious landscape lone Stern benefit abides.
Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse.
If literature survives at all, it is as retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.
Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.
People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
It is always to be understood that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her.
Years later, nothing makes me more grateful as a parent than my daughters' encounters with classroom wizards.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.
A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
Every thought is public, Every nook is wide; Thy gossips spread each whisper, And the gods from side to side.
The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.
There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.
What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.
As gas-light is found to be the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.
As much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it.
Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.
The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.
Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind.
I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.
We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.
He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
The jealous man's disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.
All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together.
What cultural DNA remains from those first Puritan forays onto American soil may be our love of a fresh start.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 briefly disrupted celebrations of a world globalised by capital and consumption.
Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed.
No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward!