Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
(Slaughter) means blood and iron. [Lat., Coedes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum.]
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures. [Lat., Continuis voluptatibus vicina satietas.]
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person
Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.
Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
Too exact, and studious of similitude rather than of beauty. [Lat., Nimis in veritate, et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior.]
We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man. [Lat., In totum jurare, nisi ubi necesse est, gravi viro parum convenit.]
Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
It is worth while too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy's mind from effort.
A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [Lat., Licet ipsa vitium sit ambitio, frequenter tamen causa virtutem est.]
Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practise of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.
God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.
Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education. [Lat., Virtus, etiamsi quosdam impetus a natura sumit, tamen perficienda doctrina est.]
For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling inot actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.
Minds that are stupid and incapable of science are in the order of nature to be regarded as monsters and other extraordinary phenomena; minds of this sort are rare. Hence I conclude that there are great resources to be found in children, which are suffered to vanish with their years. It is evident, therefore, that it is not of nature, but of our own negligence, we ought to complain.