The quote database

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.

Lastly, and possibly most important, forests make this earth comfortable and beautiful. Next to the soil, they are the most useful and helpful of Nature's agencies.

The forest is an eternal mediator between winds and gravity in their never-ending struggle for the possession of the waters.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky.

During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place—the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

In my opinion no man has had a more profitable difficulty than you have had, if you choose to make use of it as an athlete would deal with a young antagonist.

See that you do nothing like a sheep; but if you do, in this case also the man is lost.

Have you anything better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea?

If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault; for God has made all men to be happy, to be free from perturbations.

Do not admire your clothes, and then you will not be angry with the thief.

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life

Will you not go back, and you will see clearer when you have laid aside fear?

Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy?

Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man.

Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things

Wretch, you are carrying about a god with you, and you know it not.

Bring now, O Zeus, any difficulty that thou pleasest, for I have means given to me by thee and powers for honoring myself through the things which happen.

Therefore we ought to exercise ourselves in small things, and beginning with them to proceed to the greater.

If I have set my admiration on the poor body, I have given myself up to be a slave; if on my poor possessions, I also make myself a slave.

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

Keep by every means what is your own; do not desire what belongs to others.

It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are.

If you have assumed a character beyond your strength, you have both played a poor figure in that, and neglected one that is within your powers.

I am by Nature made for my own good; not for my own evil.