The quote database

Character, says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms, character is destiny. But not the whole of our destiny.

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

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

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

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

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.

A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite inquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour—the real labour of thinking.

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

It is not always recognized that the work itself is a great educator, and that acute cleverness in the line of work to which he is fitted comes to the worker.

Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.

He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception.

They may be truths to me, but don’t think that that makes them mine… because you can’t own a truth.

It’s just as important where we are not as it is where we are.

But music never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what no words can ever express.

For joy is knowledge in its completeness, it is knowing by our whole being.

Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.

For we never can make anything our own except that which is truly related to us.

All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires, obscure our true vision of the soul.

The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.