The quote database

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship

How many casualties and difficulties are there that we dread as insupportable mischiefs, which, upon farther thoughts, we find to be mercies and benefits?

Life is a navigation; we are perpetually wallowing and dashing one against another; sometimes we suffer shipwreck, but we are always in danger and in expectation of it.

Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.

This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to tower beyond the control and even the judgment of men.

Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow, then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third.

Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.

The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time.

Observe continually that all things exist in change; and keep this thought ever with you, that Nature loves nothing more than changing what things now are, and making others like them.

Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

My dear Laelius and Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains.

In that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained.

An actor, in order to earn approval, is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears.

This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death.

In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse.

Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.

The thoughtful framers of our Constitution legislated for our country as they found it.

Some day the world will understand that, and the little oases on the windy tops of hills will harbor for healing its ailing, house-weary broods.