Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby – so helpless and so ridiculous.
If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.
Thoughts rule the world.
What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.
I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose...
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.
Some men, at the approach of a dispute, neigh like horses.
Every natural action is graceful.
Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.
Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else’s head?
Flowers are the earth laughing.
As a man thinketh, so is he, and as a man chooseth, so is he.
Words are alive. Cut them and they bleed.