The evening of a well spent youth brings it’s lamps with it.
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
Grief – Happiness is to feel that one’s soul is good; there is no other, in truth, and this kind of happiness may exist even in sorrow, so that there are griefs perfable to every joy, and such as would be preferred by all those who have felt them.
Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.
The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.
To teach is to learn twice. About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard. The purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place to spend one’s leisure.
A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.
The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.
Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.
Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.
Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that’s a good thing born from a bad thing.
There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.
The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one’s soul.
If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.
All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.
Education should be gentle and stern, not cold and lax.
Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument.
Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good. One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them.
Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.