There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.
Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.
What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.
Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity speech is shallow as Time.
Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.
Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
History, a distillation of rumour.
Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.
Wonder is the basis of worship.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
All great peoples are conservative.
The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.
Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
best, being good & men
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
Work alone is noble.
To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.
Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.
A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.
Endurance is patience concentrated.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
The eye sees what it brings the power to see.