In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.Collection: Foundation
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.Collection: Mistake
The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. Thought finds its way into action.Collection: Ideas
There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls.Collection: Soul
A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.Collection: Men
What a position of transcendent horror must that be, where the perpetrator of a great crime, till then a stranger to positive guilt, finds himself suddenly cut off, and forever, from all human sympathy, isolated from hope, the tenant of a solitary cell, and with a wide, impassable gulf yawning between him and that great brotherhood of which he has ceased to be a part--no longer regarded as a man, but as a monster in the shape of one, from whom Mercy herself turns away, and for whom Pity even has no tears!Collection: Cutting
Character is very much a matter of health.Collection: Character
Care, admitted as guest, quickly turns to be master.Collection: Care
The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.Collection: Book
Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.Collection: Book
Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants-forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.Collection: Beautiful
Mortal beauty stings while it delights.Collection: Beauty
Bad taste is a species of bad morals.Collection: Taste
Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.Collection: Heart
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crimeCollection: Hunger And Poverty
Loss of sincerity is loss of vital power.Collection: Loss
Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations.Collection: States
Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.Collection: Feelings
When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.Collection: Tired
God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.Collection: Eye
He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.Collection: Pushing
Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.Collection: Yield
Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.Collection: Five Senses
I desire to go through life knowing as little of evil in it as possible. To this end, I sometimes avoid looking too closely into the nature of things, studying them only so far as they seem to be good, and abandoning interest in them as soon as their darker feature begin to appear. The good only deserves a hearty interest.Collection: Knowing
It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.Collection: Men
To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.Collection: Errors
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.Collection: Character
All good writing leaves something unexpressed.Collection: Writing
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.Collection: Children
None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.Collection: Love
We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.Collection: Love
Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.Collection: Success
The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts.Collection: Men
Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.Collection: Age
Our opinions partake, more or less, of the prejudices of our class, party, or sect. We are all largely pledged, through interest, affection, or passion, to particular classes of opinion, and the strength of efforts to get released from these pledges, is the measure of our advancement.Collection: Party
A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.Collection: Men
Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.Collection: Leadership
Passion doesn't look beyond the moment of its existence.Collection: Passion
The less the difference, the greater the quarrel over it.Collection: Differences
We absolve a friend from gratitude when we remind him of a favor.Collection: Gratitude
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.Collection: Nature
Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.Collection: Running
To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere.Collection: Beautiful
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.Collection: Life
As many suffer from too much as too little.Collection: Suffering
Men were created for something better than merely to make money. A close application to business, until a competence is gained, is one of the chief virtues; but to continue in trade long after this result is obtained, is one of the signs, not to be mistaken, of a sordid and ignoble nature.Collection: Money
The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.Collection: Beauty
It is so natural for us to consider our presence as indispensable in the world, so long as we have much to do in it, that the wisdom of retiring wholly from employments in advanced life may be questioned. Certainly, he who does so is in danger of finding, before long, that he has only given up the occupation to which he has been accustomed, for the new business of calculating the period of his decease.Collection: Retirement
How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!Collection: Men