All Quotes

"[H]e was a graduate in nature's university. Nature is wiser than the schoolmaster; she educates but she never crams. Her scholars do not go up to take their degrees; their degrees come to them."

"[H]e could not escape thinking of her, being the slave for the moment of every pretty girl. Good young men generally are."

"The first feeling drew him to her side; all nature seemed to smile so on her sweetness. She reminded him, in that secluded spot, of a fair lily shaded by its own green leaf. And then the second feeling came like a smart box on the ear. He did not like to be so suddenly overcome.[…] So […] he went on and made the circuit of the garden. But that caused no difference, of course. Amabel, not being present, was only the more there. She was everywhere. The young growing things about him were lovely, for they were like her. The old steadfast trees were interesting, as in contrast to her. And here was the donkey! The very donkey was interesting, because she often tried in vain to make him go."

"There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, the fools have made arrangements, and the wise, for the sake of law and order, or, if not, for the sake of peace and quietness, are obliged to give way."

"In general, the woman bears the small misfortunes and continued disappointments of life best, and the man bears best the great ones."

"If we consider women whose lot it is to inspire deep affection, we shall sometimes find them, not those who can most generously bestow, but those who can most generously receive."

"It would be very unlucky for cats if people in a body should discover how much more jolly it was to be out in the warm golden mist of moonlight, when all was so fresh and sweet, than tucked up in their heated bedrooms under the low ceiling that shuts out the stars."

"We often think we are of great importance to certain people; that they must be thinking of us and our affairs, that they watch our actions and shape their course accordingly. In general it is not so; we are quite mistaken."

"I am always finding out more reasons for loving you. If you send me out to walk among the rose-trees I shall find them in the shadows at their roots, and in the rain-drops that they shake from their buds. All the reading in the book of my life is about you, and the world outside tells me of you. Things fair and young and good I must needs love, because they are like you; there is pity in me, and I find a pathos in what is unlovely and old, because it is unlike."

"And we do want poetry for its beauty […] Yes, only for its beauty; for its moral power over us—its teaching, comforting, and elevating power all depend on its beauty."

"If one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure."

"A man's world, but woman bides her time."

"A man can sometimes hold his own with one woman, but never with two."

"We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution."

"The courage of New England was the "courage of conscience." It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself."

"The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good."

"Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading."

"We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag, and keep step to the music of the Union."

"Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence."

"A book is the only immortality."

"Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument."

"An apothecary should never be out of spirits."

"Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer."

"I will not say that there have been no instances of sedition; but I will affirm even that the evidence of these appears in so questionable a shape as ought to excite your suspicion. It is supported by a system of spies and informers, a system which has been carried to a greater extent under the present administration, than in any former period of the history of the country. ... [T]he government which avails itself of such support does not exist for the happiness of the people. It is a system which is calculated to engender suspicion, and to beget hostility; it not only destroys all confidence between man and man, but between the governors and the governed; where it does not find sedition, it creates it."

"Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid."

"For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself."

"Our passions are most like to floods and streams; The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."

"Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out."

"Silence in love bewrays more woe Than words, though ne’er so witty: A beggar that is dumb, you know, May challenge double pity."

"Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not; I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not."

"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay."

"Even such is time, that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust!"

"Shall I, like an hermit, dwell On a rock or in a cell?"

"If she undervalue me, What care I how fair she be?"

"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall."

"Better were it to be unborn than ill-bred."

"Remember...that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied."

"Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof."

"Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling: it is said by Isaiah in this manner — "My people, they that praise thee, seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet;" and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer. But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who, because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter. Thou mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults is thy friend; for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind."

"Speaking much also is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deeds."

"Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish."

"No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women."

"There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation."

"All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered."

"It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean."

"All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty. The reason thereof is, that as nature hath laid before men the chief of all fortunes, so she disposes them rather to rapine than honest industry, and more subject to bad than good endeavours : hereof it cometh, that one man eateth another, and he that is weakest must always go to the worst."

"A wise man ought not to desire to inhabit that country where men have more authority than laws. For indeed that country deserves to be desired where every one may securely enjoy his own, not that where with facility it may be taken away; and that friends, for fear to lose their own, are enforced to forsake them."

"He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for whoso laboureth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish, living among men that are generally evil."

"Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time."

"Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance."