The quote database

My saddest and most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets.

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

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

Whether one be fearful or fearless, foolish or wise, troubled or serene, within that soul lies the cause of its own state or states, and never without.

To be swayed by your fluctuating thoughts and impulses is to be weak and powerless; to rightly control and direct those forces is to be strong and powerful.

Man is a thought-being, and his life and character are determined by the thoughts in which he habitually dwells.

If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.

Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on these duties without great anxiety for the result.

If errors have been committed they ought to be corrected; if the policy is sound it ought to be supported.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.

If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information, and benevolence.

it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric

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.

To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition of men upon earth.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that

Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility.

A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission.

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.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it.

I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.