The quote database

The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.

A mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.

The first and last lesson of the useful arts is, that Nature tyrannizes over our works.

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.

All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird and hearing him.

the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing

By this practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy, its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility without its perturbations.

The goal of mankind is knowledge. That is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy.

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game.

The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.

In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

Very, very early in my boyhood I had acquired the habit of going about alone to amuse myself in my own way.

Extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.

Every fact we learn leads us to the learning of another fact; knowledge is continually increasing.

Every thought we think makes it necessary for us to think another thought; consciousness is continually expanding.

Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance.

Sensation is unorganized stimulus, perception is organized sensation, conception is organized perception, science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life: each is a greater degree of order, and sequence, and unity.

Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than professed enemies.

This danger is greatly heightened, as it has been always observable that men are less jealous of encroachments of one department upon another than upon their own reserved rights.