All quotes

The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be.

This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is absolutely true.

We gain our freedom when we attain our truest nature.

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

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work for catholic and universal ends.

Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.

Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.

The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.

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.

Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys ripens into a new want.

Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object.

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

Their once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding.

Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do.

Thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist

Society we must have; but let it be society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish.

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.

A species of thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk.

Just to touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray projecting over the path as I walked, seemed to repeat the same prayer in me.