Quote collection
102 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more."
"Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy."
"One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others."
"Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!"
"Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence."
"Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work."
"And in any case, to the old man, when the world becomes trite, the triteness arises not so much from a cessation as from a transference of interest. What is taken from this world is given to the next. The glory is in the east in the morning, it is in the west in the afternoon, and when it is dark the splendour is irradiating the realm of the under-world. He would only follow."
"A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers."
"To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation."
"My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable."
"A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world."
"There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve."
"The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning—first fallen flake of the coming snows of age—is a disagreeable thing.... So are flying twinges of gout, shortness of breath on the hill-side, the fact that even the moderate use of your friend's wines at dinner upsets you. These things are disagreeable because they tell you that you are no longer young—that you have passed through youth, are now in middle age, and faring onward to the shadows in which, somewhere, a grave is hid."
"The only thing a man knows is himself."
"A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell."
"In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars."
"We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once."
"Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for."
"It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word."
"Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it."