Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‘Not Me,’ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‘Nature.’
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or safe.
Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is health of every man.
Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy out of question, that the angel is shown.
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your’re the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.’ … There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.
As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its owns books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Time like space, is part of the permanent context of life. Time does not pass, we pass.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.