Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now.
The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we callFate.
The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.
Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.
Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.
But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes.
For the world was built in order around the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon.
The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition.
A bullet had found him, his blood ran out as he cried. No money could save him, so he laid down and died. Ooh, what a lucky man he was.
No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.
To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.
The possibilities for mobilizing the experience, imaginations, and intelligence of workers, both employed and unemployed, are limitless.
We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.
The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love; The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise, Sink in the soft captivity together.
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
When National Guardsmen shot four unarmed students at Kent State, virtually the entire system of higher education shuddered and stopped.
We are always boosting or trying to prop up the ego by fulfilling some desire or other, and always craving affirmation from the outside.
Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.
We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
Our life seems not present, so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- flowingvigor.
The richest of all lords is Use, And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity.
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.
Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again.
We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.
Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight.
There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.
If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a natural process but because the latter is also coded.
to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.
Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.
Throughout history the world has been laid waste to ensure the triumph of conceptions that are now as dead as the men that died for them.
A man doesn't dream about a woman because he thinks her "mysterious"; he decides that she is "mysterious" to justify his dreaming of her.
I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky.
The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties.
The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.
No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.
True fortitude is seen in great exploits That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides; And all else is tow'ring phrenzy and distraction.