Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For at the heart of the uniform, reasoning is shaky and elusive: a mind in search of ideas should first stock up on appearances.
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.
It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.
Calling Rand Paul 'the most interesting man in politics' is an invitation to an argument - but one we suspect he'd love to have.
But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.
I think Dalai Lama is always careful about stressing that people be led into the practice by somebody who knows what's going on.
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
When we see a soul whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are.
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.
Homeopathy is insignificant as an act of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time.
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall, The bias of the will betray.
If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast, Though it tear thee unexpressed.
It sometimes occurs that memory has a personality of its own and volunteers or refuses its information at its will, not at mine.
What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?
We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals; - The sower scatters broad his seed, The wheat thou strew'st be souls.
Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear.
[on Thoreau:] For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to truth itself.
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
Our impatience of miles, when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards.
It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.
A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating.
Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.
Ugliness is more inventive than beauty. Beauty always follows certain camps. I think it's more amusing - ugliness - than beauty.
Ephemerality is the little magazine's generic fate; by promptly dying it gives proof that it remained loyal to its first program.
There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim.
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.
But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.
The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.
To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.
A traveler is really not someone who crosses ground so much as someone who is always hungry for the next challenge and adventure.
I would never call Jerusalem beautiful or comfortable or consoling. But there's something about it that you can't turn away from.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.
Marriage (in what is called the spiritual world) is impossible, because of the inequality between every subject and every object.
Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.
It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.
The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.
Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.
The primary wisdom is intuition. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their origin.
My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation.