It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
The self divides into ten billion distinct illuminating spirits. Distinguish these without falling into names and classifications.
The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.
Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.
All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.
Cure the disease and kill the patient.
A private Life is to be preferred; the Honor and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it
Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
The universe is wider than our views of it.
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.
Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.
The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.
