The quote database

Their life seems an immense disparity between effort and opportunity.

I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women.

do not hope to excite love except by love

Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed.

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices.

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

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

There is no short road to the realization of these aspirations.

The press and even the pulpit, in the main either by silence or open apology, have condoned and encouraged this state of anarchy.

Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few.

She is besotted with innocent little ambitions, and does not understand this apparent waste of herself, this elaborate preparation, if no work is provided for her.

In spite of failures, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism.

Young people themselves often resent this attitude on the part of their elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if they were denied the common human experiences.

Such a young person persistently believes that behind all suffering, behind sin and want, must lie redeeming magnanimity.

The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.

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

Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life for ever.

granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice!

At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.

I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man.

So few of us can understand what it takes to make a man—the man who will never say die; the man who will never give up

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

My dear Laelius and Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains.