Make thyself perfect; others, happy.
Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.
The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.
There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.
The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.
Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.
To learn the worth of a man's religion, do business with him.
Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul this is the miser's curse this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.
We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.
When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.
We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.
Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.
Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.
If thy words are wise, they will not seem so to the foolish: if they are deep the shallow will not appreciate them. Think not highly of thyself, then, when thou art praised by many.
If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.
To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.
Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.
The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.
The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.
A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.
Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom.
They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.
Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.
The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.
In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.
Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.
If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.
Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.
States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.
The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.
Dislike of another's opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.
If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from many of the highest and profoundest minds.
Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.
If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.
The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.
A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.
To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one's self the ill will of many.
They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.
The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.
The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to venal and vulgar souls.
The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.
Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all.
There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.
If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.
Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.
What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.
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.
We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought.
The noblest are they who turning from the things the vulgar crave, seek the source of a blessed life in worlds to which the senses do not lead.
To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.
Do definite good; first of all to yourself, then to definite persons.
If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be
The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.
As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.
A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.
Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry.
If thou need money, get it in an honest way by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.
The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is
Insight makes argument ridiculous.
It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.
Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption
As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.
No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.
The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.
When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life's morning.
To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us.
The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.
Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.
What we love to do we find time to do.
One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.
If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.
Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.
A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.
Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.
As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.
It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.
If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day, this is the work of genius.
What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.
If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.
We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.
The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.
As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.
