Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute.
Everything that is exact is short.
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
The beautiful invariably possesses a visible and a hidden beauty; and it is certain that no style is so beautiful as that which presents to the attentive reader a half-hidden meaning.
Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.
When we love, it is the heart that judges.
In order to be happy, think of the ills you have been spared.
Chance generally favors the prudent.
The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
TIME and truth are friends, though there are many moments hostile to truth.
The early and the latter part of human life are the best, or, at least, the most worthy of respect; the one as the age of innocence, the other of reason.
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.
Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy, sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their fortune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die - but asleep!
We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.
Abuse of words is the foundation of ideology.
A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will.
There is an admiration which is the daughter of knowledge.
Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.
The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.
Close your eyes and you will see.
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.
Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.
When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.
To teach is to learn twice.
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Virtue is the health of the soul.
I resemble the poplar,--that tree which, even when old, still looks young.
What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.
Good maxims are the germs of all excellence.
One should choose for a wife only such a woman as he would choose for a friend, were she a man.
Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.
Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.
Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.
Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.
Children need models rather than critics.
Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear.
The mind is the atmosphere of the soul.
What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?
Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.
All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.
Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features
How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound.
Never cut what you can untie.
A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
Truth consists of having the same idea about something that God has.
God has commanded Time to console the afflicted.
Our worries always come from our weaknesses.
Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn from them.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.
The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.
Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.
We should do good whenever we can and do kindness at all times, for at all times we can.
Strength is natural, but grace is the growth of habit. This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting.
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
The mind's direction is more important than its progress.
Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.
Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.
Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.
Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
Living requires but little life; doing requires much.
Thoughts there are, that need no embodying, no form, no expression. It is enough to hint at them vaguely; a word, and they are heard and seen.
The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power.
Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes
Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.
We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their own
Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.
Luckily, I never feel at one time more than half my pains.
Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.
Truth takes the stamp of the souls it enters. It is rigorous and rough in arid souls, but tempers and softens itself in loving natures.
There are some heads which have no windows, and the day can never strike from above; nothing enters from heavenard.
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Never be sad for what is over, just be glad it was once yours. Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.
To be capable of respect is almost as rare as to be worthy of it.
Common sense suits itself to the ways of the world. Wisdom tries to confirm to the ways of heaven.
Work like you don't need the money.
We always believe God is like ourselves, the indulgent think him indulgent and the stern, terrible.
We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.
It is always our inabilities that vex us.
How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!
When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.
We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.
Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.
If you would live happily, do not exaggerate life's evils, nor slight her blessings.
Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.
We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things.
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Ask the young. They know everything.
To reason, to argue. It is to walk with crutches in search of the truth. We come to it with a leap.
Those readiest to criticise are often least able to appreciate.
When you give, give with joy and smiling.
A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.
How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one's soul.
We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality.
The evening of life brings with it its lamps.
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.
Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.
Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.
Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.
Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it... GET RICH QUICK! Count your blessings... Stop telling GOD how big your storm is. Instead, tell the storm how big your GOD is!!!!!! Contentment begins where comparison ends. The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas.
The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.
If you are poor, distinguish yourself by your virtues; if rich, by your good deeds.
Of what delights are we deprived by our excesses!
It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.
No one is mediocre who has good sense and good sentiments.
Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
You want to talk to someone; first open your ears.
The paper is patient, but the reader is not.
You have to be like the pebble in the stream, keeping the grain and rolling along without being dissolved or dissolving anything else.
Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.
Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench.
