Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
What are your historical Facts still more your biographical Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts
The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists. It is in reality no longer expected or recognized as a virtue among men.
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
Before philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded.
Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.
In our wide world there is but one altogether fatal personage, the dunce,--he that speaks irrationally, that sees not, and yet thinks he sees.
A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.
Are not our greatest men as good as lost? The men that walk daily among us, warming us, feeding us, walk shrouded in darkness, mere mythic men.
Nothing ever happens but once in all this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning.
Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.
Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.
Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!
High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge.
A pygmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.
At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet.
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
The aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of the money-bag.
The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotences, and mendacities, will have to run its course, till the pit follow it.
The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.
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.
What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one.
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.
If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.
It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.
Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.
Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.
A person with a clear purpose will make progress, even on the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress, even on the smoothest road.
Men are grown mechanical in head and in the heart, as well as in the hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force of any kind.
Evil, once manfully fronted, ceases to be evil; there is generous battle-hope in place of dead, passive misery; the evil itself has become a kind of good.
Venerable to me is the hard hand,--crooked, coarse,--wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.
To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity.
Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive the length of your tether is now pretty well run; and I must request you to talk a little lower in the future.