Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.
A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.
There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.
A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.
A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world.
Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them.
That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome.
Those who feel guilty are afraid; and those who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
Good writing , like gold , combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.
Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
There is a radicalism in all getting, and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.
Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for,they do not feel like fighting.
When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
A man's soul is pierced as it were with holes, and as his longings flow through each they are transmuted into something specific.
America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.
We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.
Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.
One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.
Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect.
Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow - by the tilt of the social landscape.
Sensuality reconciles us with the human race. The misanthropy of the old is due in large part to the fading of the magic glow of desire.
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.
It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.
A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.
We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.
When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men.