Quote collection
453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"With every step of the recent traveler our inheritance of the wonderful is diminished. Those beautiful pictured notes of the possible are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the hard coin of the actual."
"A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity"
"Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime."
"Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue."
"With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer."
"The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both."
"Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid."
"It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong is in their heads."
"What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone."
"Old events have modern meanings; only that survives of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives."
"One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him."
"Many make the household but only one the home."
"Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests."
"But civlyzation doos git forrid Sometimes upon a powder-cart."
"Granting our wish is one of Fate's saddest jokes."
"I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God."
"Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius."
"Tis easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue-- 'Tis the natural way of living."
"I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail."
"To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism."