Quote collection
4.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God."
"This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside."
"You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity."
"Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility."
"These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger."
"If we shall take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures."
"Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy."
"If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly back to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many."
"The secret of drunkenness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling."
"The dearest events are summer-rain."
"Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast"
"Perhaps love is only the highest symbol of friendship, as all other things seem symbols of love."
"All the great ages have been ages of belief."
"We walk alone in the world."
"The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment."
"The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action."
"The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him."
"A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind."
"For beauty is God's handwriting...A nd, thank God for it as a cup of His blessing."
"The April winds are magical, And thrill our tuneful frames; The garden-walks are passional To bachelors and dames."