Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.
No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.
Raising children is an uncertain thing success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.
Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need the remainder is needed by others.
God gave us the gift of life it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.
War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.
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