It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.Collection: Valentines
Our first and last love is self-love.Collection: Love
Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.Collection: Nature
Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.Collection: Courage
When all else is lost, the future still remains.Collection: Brainy
Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.Collection: Great
Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.Collection: Imagination
There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.Collection: Beauty
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.Collection: Failure
We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.Collection: Fear
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.Collection: Happiness
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.
Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.
In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent toward their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it.
Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.
The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the off-shoot of goodness.Collection: Happiness
Example has far more followers than reason.Collection: Example
The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit.Collection: Witty
Activity and sadness are incompatible.Collection: Positive
We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.Collection: Beauty
A great destiny needs a generous diet.... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!Collection: Destiny
Give me the character and I will forecast the event.Collection: Character
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.Collection: Truth