-
Lies exist only to be extinguished.
-
A force as of madness in the hands of reason has done all that was ever done in the world.
-
The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.
-
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
-
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
-
No conquest can ever become permanent which does not show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors.
-
O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.
-
I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
-
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
-
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
-
The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once.
-
Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.
-
Reform, like charity, must begin at home.
-
In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion.
-
Caution is the lower story of prudence.
-
A battle is a terrible conjugation of the verb to kill: I kill, thou killest, he kills, we kill, they kill, all kill.
-
When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
-
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
-
Love not Pleasure; love God.
-
If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of.
-
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
-
Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable.
-
Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.
-
We arc the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God.