Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn’t got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.
To obtain a man’s opinion of you, make him mad.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
Don’t be ‘consistent,’ but be simply true.
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that – one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.
Yes, child of suffering, thou may’st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!