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