Blame is safer than praise.
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
The never-ending task of self improvement.
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.
Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.
Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.
He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.
Be confident, not certain
There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.
