Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.
How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!
When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.
It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.
Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?
How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I’ve done it a thousand times.
The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.
It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.
