We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?
Self sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.
I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.
Real action is in silent moments.
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.
God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical.
I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.
Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature’s joke, and therefore literature’s. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world.
The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.
In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining forthe metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.
In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.
To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.
Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
The cheapness of man is every day’s tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
Real men don’t conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.
Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.