We are prisoners of ideas.
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.
If you shoot at a king you must kill him.
Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
Wherever work is done, victory is attained.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.
Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.
Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
A lucky person gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they’re about to do and thinks it still matters.
Anger is a brief lunacy.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
