Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.
Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable.
Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.
Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!
A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.
Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.
Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and--prayer.
Hope is the best part of our riches.
Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.
A mother is the best friend God ever gave.
The questions most furiously discussed are those which have in them a basis of truth, and yet a large admixture of errors. We inconsiderately take hold of, and mistakingly support or oppose them, as either wholly true or wholly false.
To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.
In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.
All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.
We repose too much upon the actual, when we should be seeking to develop the possibilities of our being. It is true of nearly all of us, that what we have done is little compared with what we might have accomplished, or may hereafter effect.
It is in vain that he seeks dominion abroad, who is not kingly at home.
The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.
In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.
There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls.
A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.
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