Consequences are unpitying.
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.
People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.
Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.
What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.
The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.
Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.
We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.
Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
