87 quotes
Friendship and love require the deepest and most entire confidence, but souls of a high character demand not communications of a familiar nature.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Man is apt to judge of things not so much by their intrinsic worth, as by their agreement with his own preconceived ideas.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
I have, besides, a great love for the past. Only what refers to it is eternal and unchangeable like death, and at the same time warm and gladsome like life.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
We must wait for the future, and enjoy or bear the present.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
It is a characteristic of old age to find that time passes on with accelerated pace. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
All merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly in this respect "we have our reward."
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
A letter is a conversation between the present and the absent. Its fate is that it cannot last, but must pass away like the sound of the voice.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
What lies in the nature of things and is dependent on fate, it would be silly and unmanly to lose one’s rest and inward equilibrium in thinking of it.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Providence certainly does not attend merely to the interests of individuals, but the profound wisdom of its counsels extends to the right ordering and betterment of all.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
It is a beautiful thought, that however far one shore may be from another, the wave that ripples over my foot will in a short time be on the opposite strand.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Our evangelical churches are too much regarded as places for preaching, and too little thought as intended for the religious elevation of the mind by prayer and meditation.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Work, according to my feeling, is as much of a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing which to a sensible man can be called work, still imagine that they are doing something. The world possesses not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
One cannot enough wonder or be thankful to Providence that from time to time he awakens in the spirits of a whole people, or of individuals, those truly godlike thoughts on which our inner being reposes.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Sorrows and reverses spring up independently of external circumstances, and Heaven has dealt them out so wisely to man, that those who are to outward appearance most highly favoured by fortune, are yet not on that account more exempt from the causes that originate inward pain.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
The appearance of the heavens has under all circumstances a never-ending charm for me, in the clear starlight as well as in dark nights, in the soft blue as well as in the cloudy or dark-grey sky, in which the eye loses itself, without being able to distinguish anything.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
To me it has always appeared to he best to bow with heartfelt humility to the inscrutable but unerring counsels of Heaven, and to remember that we can only in this life see a small portion of man’s existence, and therefore can form no judgment of the whole.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
The mere reality of life would be inconceivably poor without the charm of fancy, which brings in its bosom, no doubt, as many vain fears as idle hopes, but lends much oftener to the allusions it calls up a gay flattering hue than one which inspires terror.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)
Earnestness in life, even when carried to an extreme, is something very noble and great, but it must not be allowed to disturb the common business of life, else it will produce bitterness, producing injurious effects.
Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)