"The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of *labor, and the gauds of precedence."

"The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way."

"The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell."

"The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds."

"The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalcular life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face."

"The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing in its branches; a few build nests, but most are from far lands north and south, and never come again."

"The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering."

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."

"The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance."

"Thoughts are given us, not only to chew over for ourselves, but to communicate to others. And if we can find a man that is ready to receive them, and a suitable occasion, there is nothing more pleasurable than giving them."

"The fact that seems to underlie this exhortation is that we become what we think about."

"THERE is a passage of Holy Writ that exhorts us that if there be any good things, such as love, virtue, truth, and so on, we ought to think on these things."

"No one thought in all the world is of more value to put life and cheer and power into a man than the thought that the great Being who made this universe is FOR us and not AGAINST US."

"No man can tell what the whisper says. Each soul must hear for itself."

"Go into the silence. Give your soul time to calm. Let the hurly-burly die down, the crash of passion, the struggle of doubt, the pain of failure, the ranklings of wrong, the clamor of ambition. Cease from self. Be still."

"God always whispers. At least to the soul. He may thunder to nations and speak to armies in the lightning. But to the individual His message is not in the mighty wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the still, small voice."

"How to value my own self-esteem more than the praise of others."

"How to get along with relatives and all those persons with whom I come in contact."

"How to handle enemies and those who wrong or offend me."

"How to make friends and keep them."

"How to control my sex instinct so as to make it conduce my permanent happiness and not to disease, mental misery, and the wrecking of my career."

"How to get stimulation out of simple food and water drink, and not alcohol."

"How to be a good fellow without being a fool."

"How to work so as to make work a pleasure."

"How to play fair."

"How to curb my selfishness and develop my altruism."

"How to get joy out of nature."

"How to find pleasure in common things."

"How to improve and toughen my will."

"How to use my imagination so as to strengthen me instead of making me weak."

"How to control my temper."

"Better than big business is clean business. To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean. What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while. "A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow." This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty. Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare. That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money. That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong. And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions. The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar.<brAnd the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society. Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work."

"Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black — the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a sea of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universal problem."

"Bend close! You will smell the lily fragrance of love, the stench of lust, now odors as exquisite as the very spirit of violets, and now such nauseous repulsions as words cannot tell."

"Listen! You will hear mothers' lullabies, madmen's shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of lovers, the curses of pirates."

"The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches' Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-spattered scene of nameless tragedies."

"The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunkenness and death."

"The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark."

"Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house.""

"[I]t is extremely difficult to say whether he wishes to expound moral philosophy with historical examples, or decorate the narration of important affairs...with philosophical arguments."

"In the writings of such "pagan" philosophers as Plutarch and Porphyry we find a humanitarian ethic of the most exalted kind, which, after undergoing a long repression during medieval churchdom, reappeared, albeit but weakly and fitfully at first, in the literature of the Renaissance, to be traced more definitely in the eighteenth century school of "sensibility.""

"There is another accusation which irritates me on Plutarch's behalf: it is where Bodin says that Plutarch showed good faith in his parallels between Roman and Roman or Greek and Greek but not between Roman and Greek. Witness, he says, Demosthenes and Cicero; Cato and Aristides; Sylla and Lysander; Marcellus and Pelopidas; Pompey and Agesilaus, reckoning as he does that he favoured the Greeks by matching them so unfairly. That is precisely to attack what is most excellent and commendable in Plutarch: for in those parallel lives (which are the most admirable part of his works and to my mind the one he took most pleasure in) the faithfulness and purity of his judgements equals their weight and profundity. He is a philosopher who teaches us what virtue is."

"Plutarch is amazing in every respect but especially where he makes judgements on men's actions."

"My very own Plutarch – so perfect, so outstanding a judge of human actions."

"[Plutarch's works contains] the sum of Greek and Latin history made up of great maxims and greater instances, noble precepts and nobler examples, set off with...vigorous eloquence."

"[Plutarch's Lives are] crowded with very wise maxims and rules of life."

"[Plutarch's Parallel Lives contain] so many beautiful and serious discourses throughout, derived from the deepest and most hidden secrets of moral and natural philosophy, so many wise warnings, and fruitful advice."

"When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I 'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living.""

"And when the physician said, "Sir, you are an old man," "That happens," replied Pausanias, "because you never were my doctor.""