Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.
True humility is contentment.
The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.
Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.
Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth.
Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart, in its cunning, quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamor within.
Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.
Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.
Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Order is man's greatest need, and his true well-being.
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
Men prefer the false due to habit, passion, will. Preference for truth is rare. Men are ruled by their fear of truth.
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.
Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
There is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good.
There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
Hope is only the love of life.
There is an illusion of central position, justifying one's own purposes as right and everybody else¹s as wrong, and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.
The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.
A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.
What governs men is the fear of truth.
He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases t grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end.
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
Accept life, and you must accept regret.
He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is . . . a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.
Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.
To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
Men don't achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won't criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things.
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
Kindness is gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.
The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
Life is an apprenticeship to the constant renunciations, to the steady failure of our claims, our hopes, our powers, our liberty.
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age.
Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
What we do not understand we have no right to judge
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.
Almost everything comes from almost nothing.
Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Whatever impatience we may feel towards our neighbor, and whatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to another, and, companions in labour and misfortune, have everything to lose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each other's weakness, helpful, tolerant, many, tender towards each other! Or, if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity!
Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into pardon.
Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.
Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity.
Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery.
Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.
Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time.
The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory.
Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.
Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.
In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.
To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also - He above all - is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.
The best path through life is the highway.
The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.
The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.
The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship.
A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.
Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always--this is duty.
Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.
Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is.
Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.
The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence.
The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.
To marry unequally is to suffer equally.
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
It is work which gives flavor to life.
A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.
Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.
Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.
True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
There is no curing a sick man who believes himself to be in health.
Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri
