New arts destroy the old.
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.
For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — 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.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.
You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.
That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.
Events tend to recur in cycles…
Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.
I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
