The quote database

the foolish overlook and neglect present blessings, through their thoughts being ever intent on the future; but the wise make the past clearly present to them through memory

Whereas among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.

Otherwise, my dear wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter, if we consider our position before her birth as more perfect.

as the strings of the bow and lyre are alternately tightened and relaxed, so is it with the order of the world; in human affairs there is nothing pure and without alloy

the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the best pass through

intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend

Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest.

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

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

This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is absolutely true.

Only love is motion and rest in one.

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.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Their once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best

We say so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it.

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

If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves.

The soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.

The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or the place.

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.

Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.