The quote database

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.

Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;--to bear others' company is easier for them than to bear their own.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object.

There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer

Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.

Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it.

While I silently ponder on that Change wrought in me, I find no Language equal to it, nor any Means to convey to another a clear Idea of it.

Running in this Road I found many like myself; and we associated in that which is the reverse of true Friendship.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind, and when you lay down on the pillow at night, no matter who’s in our bed we all sleep alone.

Moreover men commonly deceive themselves in respect of the love which they imagine others bear them, nor can ever be sure of it until they have put it to the proof.

a friend should be like money tried before being required, not found faulty in our need

If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.

To be great is to be misunderstood

One protects himself by solitude, and one by courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly manner,--each concealing how he can the thinness of his skin and his incapacity for strict association.

Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole.

By this practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy, its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility without its perturbations.

When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings

It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admiration of others: it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's own thoughts.