World Quotes — page 187

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

Men are so unwilling to displease a Prince, that it is as dangerous to inform him right, as to serve him wrong.

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.

But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.

The men and women of this country will be burnt into fine building material for the new Britain in the fiery kilns of the war.

My voice is still for war. Gods! Can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death? No, let us rise at once, Gird on our swords, and, At the head of our remaining troops, attack the foe,

I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny them —

This world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too.

Free trade or political economy is the science of free society, and socialism is the science of slavery.

The living inhabitation of the world — the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the waters, to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no help …

The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract …

I repudiate these attacks on him...a German of the Germans...his honour so assailed. Who made this infamous attack upon our friend? Men who till now have been looked upon as Germans, but who henceforth are unworthy of that name. And these …

Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.

Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.

Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.

We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long alive but whose appearance we know through their portraits.

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known & seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error …

To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.