The quote database

Human judgment is never unerring, and is rarely regarded as otherwise than wrong by the unsuccessful party in the contest.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

Think only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him.

To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse.

Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work.

Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.

Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.

success--the real success--does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service.

Very, very early in my boyhood I had acquired the habit of going about alone to amuse myself in my own way.

Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.

No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstract principle.

Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.

Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

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.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.

There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern--why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good.