Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is no applause that so flatters a man as that which he wrings from unwilling throats.
Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan.
Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion to the atheist, it is immortality to the poet!
Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting.
Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.
Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.
What is failure except feebleness? And what is it to miss one's mark except to aim widely and weakly?
Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
Fame has only the span of the day, they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something.
The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swine.
Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.
The radical defect in Christianity is that it tried to win the world by a bribe, and it has become a nullity.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.
Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.
Dissimulation is the only thing that makes society possible; without its amenities the world would be a bear-garden.
Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss.
It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.
Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.
Scandals are like dandelion seeds--they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.
It is quite easy for stupid people to be happy; they believe in fables, and they trot on in a beaten track like a horse on a tramway.
Even of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian.
A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.
It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.
It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.
Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honored.
You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration.
What we love once, we love forever. Shall there be joy in heaven over those who repent, yet no forgiveness for them upon earth? --"Wanda
Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.
I have known men who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of exchange.
Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can be pure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest.
When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.
for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?
There is nothing that you may not get people to believe in if you will only tell it them loud enough and often enough, till the welkin rings with it.
A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.
Friendship is such an elastic word. There never was an age when it stood for so many things in private, and was yet so absolutely non-existent in fact.
Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and maybe you love it a good deal more.
nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs.
you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some one else's, and the haul too.
Humiliation is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready his resting-place, and will give him a fair welcome. ... no one can disgrace you save yourself.
When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!
A new life is innocent, like an empty page, ready for the hard lessons ahead. GENNITA LOW, Facing Fear To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
Coleridge cried; "O God, how glorious it is to live!" Renan asks, "O God, when will it be worth while to live?" In Nature we echo the poet; in the world we echo the thinker.
When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.
The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well-spring is eternal.
Christianity has been cruel in much to the human race. It has quenched much of the sweet joy and gladness of life; it has caused the natural passions and affections of it to be held as sins.
The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves.
Friendship is usually treated...as a tough...thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But this is an exceedingly great and foolish error; it may die in an hour of a single unwise word.
We do not want to think. We do not want to hear. We do not care about anything. Only give us a good dinner and plenty of money, and let us outshine our neighbors. There is the Nineteenth Century Gospel.