Quote collection
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"Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents."
"Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful."
"Looking at your life as a debt may seem the dreariest view of things at a distance; but it cannot really be so. What makes life dreary is the want of motive; but once beginning to act with the penitential, loving purpose you have in your mind, there will be unexpected satisfactions--there will be newly-opening needs--continually coming to carry you on from day to day. You will find your life growing like a plant."
"I shall never love anybody. I can't love people. I hate them.' 'The time will come, dear, the time will come."
"Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babies; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep."
"The best happiness will be to escape the worst misery."
"History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume."
"Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals."
"What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!"
"History, we know, is apt to repeat itself."
"It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream."
"The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another."
"Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit."
"The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow."
"There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles."
"It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather."
"My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake."
"Say "I love you" to those you love. The eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all."
"It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory."
"But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong."