We are prisoners of ideas.
Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.
The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.
They must first judge themselves, that presume to censure others: And such will not be apt to overshoot the Mark. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. And yet we could hurt no Man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the [Laurel]. If I am even with my Enemy, the Debt is paid; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever.
You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.
In charity there is no excess.
A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.
Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
