“In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
“The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
“Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“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.”
“Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
