The quote database

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.

We classify too much and enjoy too little.

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world

Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the nation.

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

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.

Great men, I say, often rejoice at crosses of fortune just as brave soldiers do at wars.

Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.

Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Observe continually that all things exist in change; and keep this thought ever with you, that Nature loves nothing more than changing what things now are, and making others like them.

The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.

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

But we have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing.

None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous radiance of the spring, have the lotus charm.

I was thrown out of work, and now that I had got into the habit of writing I did not know what to make of my spare time.

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

If happiness is what you’re after, then you are going to be let down frequently and be unhappy much of your time.

We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.

The race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way.

The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.

Happiness demands a certain outcome, it is result reliant.

Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?

Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself.