The quote database

The soul should take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel.

His capacity for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened to take less than his full time he characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal.

There is a direct pleasure in seeing work grow under one's hands day by day, until at last it is finished.

Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.

At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round--and what is it all for?

Language is our largest common medium, and leads on into literature, which is but preserved speech.

The more you are and the more you do, the richer your life, the greater your joy.

You’ll never see a U-haul behind a hearse.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.

Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy?

That was all of tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things.

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.

We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot.

My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Pride in one's work is aroused as soon as work is functionalized. The moment a man has something to do that he likes to do, and can do well, he takes pride in it.

Not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient; for he that is so, wants nothing.