Balance Quotes

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.”

“Wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.”

“Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.”

“There is a tendency for things to right themselves.”

“The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advancesto his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.”

“Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.”

“Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.”

“The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.”

“An overflow of good converts to bad.”

“Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.”

“The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”

“Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.”

“If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.”

“At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat.”

“The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.”

“It does not to dwell on dreams and forget to live, but it is equally foolish to ignore the past – never forget.”

“People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.”

“For everything you gain, you lose something.”

“A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.”

“If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.”

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

“The life of this world is nothing but the harmony of opposites”

“So many hours must I take my rest;So many hours must I contemplate.”

“Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.”