ThursdaySep 18, 2025
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor.
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
Today is a goblet day. The whole heavens have been mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist.
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes openly bad and secretly bad.
The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought not by the rising and setting of the sun.
No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself.
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Now comes the mystery.
In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
Victories that are cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands.
In things pertaining to enthusiasm no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic.
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
Gratitude is the fairest blossom Which springs from the soul.
A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.
It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.
It is trial that proves one thing weak and another strong. A house built on the sand is in fair weather just as good as if builded on a rock. A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is no strain upon it.
To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky we love them.
A tool is but the extension of a mans hand and a machine is but a complex tool; and he that invents a machine augments the power of man and the well-being of mankind.
It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.
Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her.
A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.
An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.
If you have only two or three things that you can enjoy and they are things which time and decay may remove from you, what are you going to do in old age?
A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nations flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the nation that sets it forth.
Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.
When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.
A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.
There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.
The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going in that way too.
A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and ... unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety.
For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say 'I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog.' And yet we call them 'only brutes'!
Living is death; dying is life On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans; on that, children; on this side captives; on that freemen; on this side, disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed as the sons of God.
All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life.
If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.
Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
If theres a job to be done, I always ask the busiest man in my parish to take it on and it gets done.
Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often, as intolerance.
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns.
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
The greatest architect and the one most needed is hope.
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard taskmaster to yourself and be lenient with everybody else.
There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure.
A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an axe? And affairs that had not grit in them how long would they take to make a man.
He thinketh no evil
The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.
Good humor makes all things tolerable.
God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.
Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them.
It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.
Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock.
Flowers ... have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.
Flattery is praise insincerely given for an interested purpose.
Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those who are alike associate together, repeat the things which all believe, defend and stimulate their common faults of disposition, and each one receives from the others a reflection of his own egotism.
Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.
If you want your neighbor to know what the Christ spirit will do for him, let him see what it has done for you.
The elect, those who will; the non-elect, those who wont.
I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people who, in order not to speak wrong never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.
A good digestion is as truly obligatory as a good conscience; pure blood is as truly a part of mankind as a pure faith; and a well ordered skin is the first condition of that cleanliness which is next to Godliness.
Any man can work when every stroke of his hand brings down the fruit rattling from the tree to the ground; but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement, by the power of truth ... that requires a heroism which is transcendent.
It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible.
You cannot find in the New Testament any of those hateful representations of dying which men have invented, by which death is portrayed as a ghastly skeleton with a scythe, or something equally revolting. The figures by which death is represented in the N
Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.
It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.
Nothing marks the change from the city to the country so much as the absence of grinding noises. The country is never silent. But its sounds are separate, distinct, and as it were, articulate.
Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Christ is risen! There is life, therefore, after death! His resurrection is the symbol and pledge of universal resurrection!
Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness.... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them.
Every boy wants someone older than himself to whom he may go in moods of confidence and yearning. The neglect of this childs want by grown people ... is a fertile source of suffering.
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wring, but the coals are.
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you better look it up.
It is not well for a man to pray cream; and live skim milk.
There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart they are meant to be borne they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.
Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear long the burden of great joys.
We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, - all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it.
No man is more cheated than the selfish man.
When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.
In this world, it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
Success is full of promises till men get it; and then it is as last year's nest, from which the bird has flown.
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is: that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
We sleep, but the loom of life never stops and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow.
Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.
There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature.
Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
In a natural state, tears and laughter go hand in hand; for they are twin-born. Like two children sleeping in one cradle, when one wakes and stirs, the other wakes also.
Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
A mans' character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
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