Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If a man lose his balance, and immerse himself in any trades or pleasures for their own sake, he may be a good wheel or pin, but he is not a cultivated man.
The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his.
The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature.
The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.
To achieve deep focus nowadays is also to have struck a blow against the dissipation of self; it is to have strengthened one's essential position [in life].
I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally.
I've always found that once you're in the door of a place and you have the chance to show how you operate and how talented you are, then anything can happen.
Writing reminds you of how much there is in your life that stands outside your explanations. In that way, it's almost a journey into faith and doubt at once.
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, trebleor centuple use and meaning.
It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascinationfor all educated Americans.
Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.
I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.
Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.
I'm always fascinated by losers. Also, in my "Foucault's Pendulum," the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners.
Complete honesty has nothing to do with 'purity' or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.
In December 2004, I travelled on the road from Uzbekistan across the Oxus River on which the first Soviet convoys had rolled into Afghanistan 25 years before.
Many different substances, as distinct to the practiced eye as stone and wood, go to the making of a novel, and it is necessary to see them for what they are.
You can only make sense of the online world by going offline and by getting the wisdom and emotional clarity to know how to make the best use of the Internet.
I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages
The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.
Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes.
But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the human mind?
It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.
You’ll come back To me . . . It’s written in the stars, you see, you’ll come back. You’ll come back, it’s a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you.
A great problem of the internet is how to filter information, how to discard what is not relevant or what is silly and to keep only the important information.
For many years I have devoted articles and essays to newspapers, from the inside. So criticism of the newspapers was a topic that I practiced for a long time.
At its core, the United States is grateful, warm-hearted, full of unexpected twists and turns - not a cold and bullying prison - it's a place of infinite jest.
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics.
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.
I don't think it's necessary to shout if you have a good story. But I also don't think you should shy away from being bold in the statement that you're making.
Everything has its price - and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained... it is impossible to get anything without this price.
He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the plants, the waters, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments - is the rich and royal man.
It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.
The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.
The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to fix the parallax of any other star
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.
Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.