Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling.
I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.
Kind hearts are the garden, kind thoughts are the roots, kind words are the blossoms, kind deeds are the fruit.
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.
The artist's business is to feel, although he may think a little sometimes... when he has nothing better to do.
If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use.
So far as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present.
It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior.
The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.
Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.
Work first and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel.
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it.
Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.
Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.
There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.
Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.
It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; or nobly, which is done in pride.