Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.
In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
Work alone is noble.
Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
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.
I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.
The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
All great peoples are conservative.
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
best, being good & men
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.
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.
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.
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.
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.
Wonder is the basis of worship.
History, a distillation of rumour.
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.
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Endurance is patience concentrated.
If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?