The quote database

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

Sometimes we fail to hear or heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.

At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart

As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.

Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.

There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

Fully impressed with the gravity of the duties that confront me and mindful of my weakness, I should be appalled if it were my lot to bear unaided the responsibilities which await me.

The strong man who in the confidence of sturdy health courts the sternest activities of life and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor may still have lurking near his vitals the unheeded disease that dooms him to sudden collapse.

I accept with humility the honor which the American people have conferred upon me.

If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep.

Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in doubt, anxiety and fear.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded on sand.

My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life.

Whatever moves me, whatever thrills me, is as a hand that touches me in the dark, and that touch is my reality.

To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound.

Nothing is more hidden from us than the illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life.

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.