The quote database

Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.

The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.

It is because it is so much easier to shirk in civilization that it is difficult to get a standard of what your average man can do.

A person is idle because his thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleasures of idleness.

The brain can be trained, as the hand and eye can be trained; it can be made as obedient as a sporting dog, and by similar methods.

The truth is, that our nature is essentially restless in its character: we very soon get tired of having nothing to do; it is intolerable boredom.

Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;--to bear others' company is easier for them than to bear their own.

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.

Without diversion no joy, with diversion no sadness.

Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot regain it?

all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration.

So I ask you today: How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes?

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

Keep by every means what is your own; do not desire what belongs to others.

See that you do nothing like a sheep; but if you do, in this case also the man is lost.

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

Sometimes we fail to hear or heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.

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

Nothing is more hidden from us than the illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.

Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility.

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

A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite inquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour—the real labour of thinking.