Quotes

We all work to one effect, some willingly, and with a rational apprehension of what we do: others without any such knowledge.

The body is to everyone the proper measure of its possessions, as the foot is of the shoe.

The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that which has no (substantial) existence enters where there is no crevice.

A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.

The wisest and best of men,--nay, the wisest and best of their actions,--may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.

The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.

No man, one sees, can understand and estimate the entire structure or its parts—what are its frailties and what its repairs, without knowing the nature of the materials.

Then it was that Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy—in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life.

I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism--fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.

The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other.

The harmony of soul and body—how much that is!

Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee.

Be mostly silent, or speak merely what is needful, and in few words.

The relation of the Tao to all the world is like that of the great rivers and seas to the streams from the valleys.