193 quotes
Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
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.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right without thinking whether or not it shall be known.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others, the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
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.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of conduct can not make us good.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
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.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
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.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
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.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
The mind perceives … that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.
Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)