Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle it without debate.
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.
Children need models rather than critics.
Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.
Without duty, life is sort of boneless; it cannot hold itself together.
We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.
Chance generally favors the prudent.
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
The mind's direction is more important than its progress.
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.
Politeness is the flower of humanity.
The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.
Ornaments were invented by modesty.
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night.
Space is the stature of God.
Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
To teach is to learn twice.
Tenderness is the rest of passion.
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
The passions of the young are vices in the old.
Ask the young. They know everything.