The quote database

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear; and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault; for God has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations.

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

The labour of the body frees us from the pains of the mind, and thus makes the poor happy.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.

We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation.

To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition of men upon earth.

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.

Oh! the delights of rest when a man comes to be weary, and of meat when he is heartily hungry.

Overlooking partial and temporary evils as inseparable from the practical operation of all human institutions, and looking only to the general result, every patriot has reason to be satisfied.

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.

as the strings of the bow and lyre are alternately tightened and relaxed, so is it with the order of the world; in human affairs there is nothing pure and without alloy

Let us cleanse therefore the fountain of contentedness, which is within us, that so external things may turn out for our good, through our putting the best face on them.

the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the best pass through

Only love is motion and rest in one.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.