25 quotes
A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.
Autobiography (1873)
Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.
Autobiography (1873)
But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation.
Autobiography (1873)
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
Autobiography (1873)
If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.
Autobiography (1873)
I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it...
Autobiography (1873)
I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.
Autobiography (1873)
And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.
Autobiography (1873)
Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind.
Autobiography (1873)
The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete sceptics in religion...
Autobiography (1873)
I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.
Autobiography (1873)
In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness.
Autobiography (1873)
From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object.
Autobiography (1873)
The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I perpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feeling and thought.
Autobiography (1873)
It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own.
Autobiography (1873)
I thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the English Constitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes, or any such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great demoralizing agency in the country.
Autobiography (1873)
I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.
Autobiography (1873)
In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of childhood an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood.
Autobiography (1873)
Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
Autobiography (1873)
The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.
Autobiography (1873)