The quote database

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another--until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Well, it is something to have got here, and the wind may be our friend to-morrow.

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.

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.

Love should run out to meet love with open arms.

To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life.

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

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

Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: Surely not all in vain.

"Inherent differences" between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity.

To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection.

Think only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him.

Such biographies increase a man's self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and what they can do; fortifying his hopes and elevating his aims in life.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value.

hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.

The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.

Thrift does not require superior courage, nor superior intellect, nor any superhuman virtue.

We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.

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

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character.

If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then.