Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.
Our business being to colonize the country, there was only one way to do it?by spreading over it all the associations and connections of family life.
We conceal it from ourselves in vain--we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image.
You fall into my arms. / You are the good gift of destruction?s path, / When life sickens more than disease / And boldness is the root of beauty? / Which draws us together.
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.
The amount of success is in inverse proportion to the effort in attaining success.
Success is the result of behavior that completely contradicts the usual expectations about the behavior of a successful person.
A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.
The difficulty about a gentlemen?s agreement is that it depends on the continued existence of the gentlemen
Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. Authority is for children and servants, yet not without sweetness.
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglars in politics as well as mortals.
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.
Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action which constitutes Free Government, be settling on immutable foundations Liberty with Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority.
The double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life.
The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.
The Word of God is the universal and invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, that emits its blaze in the Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars.
A Human Thought is an actual EXISTENCE, and a Force and Power, capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind.
What is thought? It is not Matter, nor Spirit. It is not a Thing; but a Power and Force. I make upon a paper certain conventional marks, that represent that Thought. There is no Power or Virtue in the marks I write, but only in the Thought which they tell to others. I die, but the Thought still lives. It is a Power. The fact that Thought continues to exist an instant, after it makes its appearance in the soul, proves it immortal: for there is nothing conceivable that can destroy it. The spoken words, being mere sounds, may vanish into thin air, and the written ones,mere marks, be burned, erased, destroyed: but the THOUGHT itself lives still, and must live on forever.
The Universe, which is the uttered Word of God, is infinite in extent. There is no empty space beyond creation on any side. The Universe, which is the Thought of God pronounced,never was not, since God never was inert; nor was, without thinking and creating. The forms of creation change, the suns and worlds live and die like the leaves and the insects, but the Universe itself is infinite and eternal, because God Is, Was, and Will forever Be, and never did not think and create.
The Universe should be deemed an immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together, and makes the world of things a complete and perfect whole.
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend.
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.
Men are great or small in stature as it pleases God. But their nature is great or small as it pleases themselves. Men are not born, some with great souls and some with little souls. One by taking thought cannot add to his stature, but he can enlarge his soul. By an act of the will he can make himself a moral giant, or dwarf himself to a pygmy.