Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.
I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity speech is shallow as Time.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.
Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.
True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.