When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

ASAP. Whatever that means. It must mean, 'Act swiftly awesome pacyderm!

Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!

A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.

The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.

Pray, do not mock me.I am a very foolish fond old man,Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;And, to deal plainly,I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.

What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other.

However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

As you live Deeper in the Heart, the Mirror gets clearer and cleaner.

You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.

How often have I found that wanting to use blue, I didn't have it so I used a red instead of the blue.

Be brave enough to do the loving thing.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Water the fruit trees and don’t water the thorns.

Don't allow your animal nature to rule your reason.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from... Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.

Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.

But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame.

Reason without learning is like the untilled soil, or like the human body that lacks nourishment.

If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?

My love admits no qualifying dross

The best people to work for are me, myself and I.

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

... War is for everyone, for children too.I wasn't going to tell you and I mustn't.The best way is to come uphill with meAnd have our fire and laugh and be afraid.

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.

The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst.

If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.

Nothing worth learning can ever be taught

What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Those who dream must be awakened, and the deeper the people are who slumber, or the deeper they slumber, the more important it is that they be awakened, and the more powerfully must they be awakened.

It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.

He, who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his hand.

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

Genius learns from nature, its own nature. Talent learns from art.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

And nature must obey necessity.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has. Some cognizance of the fact must be taken in your teaching.

I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.

If you don't feel it, you'll never achieve it.

You write because you don't talk very well, and maybe one of the reasons that I was determined to write was that I wasn't an orator, unlike my mother and my grandfather, who both spoke beautifully and spoke all the time. Maybe I grew up with too many voices around me, as a matter of fact.

Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation - but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?

We would be ashamed of our best behavior if the people knew the motives of our behaving so.