We falsely attribute to men a determined character, putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support, it is worse than a large family, he is the silent poor indeed.
Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.
Genius Borrows nobly.
Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
For who is pleased with himself.
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.
It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.
It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.
God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.
A wise man makes what he learns his own, the other shows he is but a copy or a collection at most.
