The quote database

Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining

Beside, that the ills which he fears he may suffer, he suffers in the very fear of them.

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet every body fools us out of it that has a mind to it.

A wise man gives way to tears in some cases, and cannot avoid them in others.

The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself.

A false and a childish sorrow is appeased with as false and as childish a revenge.

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

if you see that anything is within man's power, and part of his proper work, conclude that you also may attain to it

In rest you go beyond these limits, and beyond what is enough; but in action you do not fill the measure, and remain well within your powers.

Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm?

Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords with Nature, and depart contentedly.

Make trial how the life of a good man succeeds with you, the life of one who is content with the lot appointed him by Providence

Fear proceeds from the same things when absent which occasion grief when present.

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

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

The fact is that old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.

Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.

He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception.

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.

I had, and still have, determined perseverance, but I soon found that it was in vain to occupy my mind beyond a certain time.

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves

The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.

I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.

Life’s not easy…don’t try and make it that way. It’s not fair, it never was, it isn’t now, it won’t ever be.

They may be truths to me, but don’t think that that makes them mine… because you can’t own a truth.