Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

All mankind love a lover.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

A friend is the hope of the heart.

When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

A friend is one before whom you may think aloud.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between two people.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.

Our best thoughts come from others.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Rings and jewels are not gifts but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of yourself.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

The secret of education is respecting the pupil.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we know.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

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.

United States! Go put your creed into your deed.

The definition of success--To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived--this is to have succeeded.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary person, but he is braver five minutes longer.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.

Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us.

Let the river roll which way it will, cities will rise on its banks.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

One always dies too soon--or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are--your life, and nothing else.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

The course of life is unpredictable, no one can write his autobiography in advance.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

The first wealth is health.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.