Quote collection
471 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow And be not happy like a naked star, Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow, Some rapture from the rapture felt afar."
"It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs."
"A musical education is necessary for musical judgement. What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a drowsy reverie relieved by nervous thrills."
"Fear first created the gods."
"With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me."
"Reason and happiness are like other flowers; they wither when plucked."
"Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion."
"Wisdom comes from disillusionment."
"There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves."
"Beauty is objectified pleasure."
"Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies."
"Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses."
"A simple life is its own reward."
"To turn events into ideas is the function of literature."
"Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment."
"The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey."
"The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings."
"Art is a delayed echo."
"Art like life, should be free, since both are experimental."
"The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact."