Wisdom Quotes — page 468

As aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crush'd or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around.

Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; Then to that twenty add a hundred more: A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, To make that thousand up a million. Treble that million, and when that is done Let's kiss afresh, as when we first …

Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than the sins of passion.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Where the bright seraphim in burning row Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest.

There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.

So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.

I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?"

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original …

[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.

I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, “simple interpretation” is obviously not enough.

Rome was not built in one day.

Some sensations are sleeps that take up all the extent of the mind like a fog, don't let us think, don't let us act, don't let us be clearly.

569. All Women are good ; viz. good for something, or good for nothing.

Of all smells, bread ; of all tasts, salt.

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

John Barleycorn got up again, And sore surprised them all.