Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother. —Bulwer-Lytton.
I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had not been for one thing, the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caused me to repeat the Lord's Prayer. —Thomas Randolph.
The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man. —George Eliot.
When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva, that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother, – mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman. —Luther.
There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart. —Hemans.
Motive.– The morality of an action depends upon the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but with respect to me, the action is very wrong. —Johnson.
Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man's moral position, is mightier than steam, or caloric, or lightning. —Chapin.
Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. —Kreeshna.
We must not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. —George Eliot.
Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, every labor enjoyment. —Jacobi.
Mourning.– Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still! —Tennyson.
The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews. —Thomson.
Music.– Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony, but organically I am incapable of a tune. —Lamb.
All musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion. —Sydney Smith.
Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong. —Mrs. Stowe.
There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say that music is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of space. —Heinrich Heine.
The hidden soul of harmony. —Milton.
Give me some music! music, moody food of us that trade in love. —Shakespeare.
Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. —Tuckerman.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie. —Milton.
Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect. —Goethe.
Music, which gentler on the spirit lies than tired eyelids upon tired eyes. —Tennyson.
Melodies die out like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. —George Eliot.
Music can noble hints impart, engender fury, kindle love, with unsuspected eloquence can move and manage all the man with secret art. —Addison.
Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world; one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound. —Mazzini.
N
Naïveté.– Naïveté is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is not natural. —Mendelssohn.
Name.– A virtuous name is the precious only good for which queens and peasants' wives must contest together. —Schiller.
A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself. —Goethe.
Napoleon.– Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones. —Byron.
Napoleon I. might have been the Washington of France; he preferred to be another Attila, – a question of taste. —F. A. Durivage.
Nature.– Nature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Nature will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation: like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her. —Bacon.
Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature. —De Finod.
Nature, – a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere. —Emerson.
Nature is poetic, but not mankind. When one aims at truth it is easier to find the poetic side of nature than of man. —X. Doudan.
All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth. —Chapin.
Nature is no sentimentalist, – does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. —Emerson.
Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit: a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master, – the root, the branch, the fruits, – the principles, the consequences. —Pascal.
A noble nature can alone attract the noble, and alone knows how to retain them. —Goethe.
Nature, the vicar of the almighty Lord. —Chaucer.
A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory. —Coleridge.
We, by art, unteach what Nature taught. —Dryden.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll. —Alcott.
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. —Emerson.
Nature is an absolute and jealous divinity. Lovely, eloquent, and instructive in all her inequalities and contrasts, she hides her face, and remains mute to those who, by attempting to re-fashion her, profane her. —Mazzini.
Necessity.– Necessity is a bad recommendation to favors of any kind, which as seldom fall to those who really want them, as to those who really deserve them. —Fielding.
It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion. —Johnson.
When God would educate a man He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation. —Celia Burleigh.
Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy. —Joubert.
What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life. —Tennyson.
Neglect.– He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor. —Johnson.
News.– Give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt. —Shakespeare.
Newspapers.– In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses. —Heinrich Heine.
Before this century shall run out journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth; it will spread from Pole to Pole, suddenly burning with the fervor of soul which made it burst forth; it will be the reign of the human mind in all its plenitude; it will not have time to ripen, to accumulate in the form of a book; the book will arrive too late; the only book possible from day to day is a newspaper. —Lamartine.
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. —Napoleon.
They preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war with an authority which only the first Reformers and a long-past class of Popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the discipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition the new preachers somewhat resemble the mendicant Friars of old times; outwardly, full of holy zeal; inwardly, not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things. —Carlyle.
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes. —Johnson.
Night.– Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. —Mrs. Barbauld.
The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night. —Longfellow.
Sable-vested night, eldest of things. —Milton.
O mysterious night! Thou art not silent: many tongues hast thou. —Joanna Baillie.
Night, when deep sleep falleth on men. —Bible.
No.– No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at once. —Walter Scott.
Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin. —Spurgeon.
The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No. She who explains wants to be convinced. —Alfred de Musset.
Nobility.– Virtue is the first title of nobility. —Molière.
Nonsense.– Nonsense is to sense as shade to light – it heightens effect. —Fred. Saunders.
Nothing.– There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account. —Fontaine.
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something. —Richter.
Novels.– Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them – almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men, – Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, – are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. —Thackeray.
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose. —Balzac.
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low. —Swift.
Novelty.– The enormous influence of novelty – the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment – is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you drink after it?" The two points of practical wisdom in the matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and secondly, to preserve, as as much possible, the sources of novelty. —Ruskin.
Novelty is the great-parent of pleasure. —South.
O
Obedience.– To obey is better than sacrifice. —Bible.
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice, it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. —George Eliot.
Oblivion.– Oblivion is the flower that grows best on graves. —George Sand.
The grave of human misery. —Alfred de Musset.
Observation.– It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men, – the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid. —Samuel Smiles.
Observation made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over fearful of a little dust. —Colton.
Each one sees what he carries in his heart. —Goethe.
Occupation.– The want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude. —Rousseau.
The busy have no time for tears. —Byron.
One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman. —Lacretelle.
Ocean.– Wave rolling after wave in torrent rapture. —Milton.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, or like a cradled creature lies. —Barry Cornwall.
The visitation of the winds, who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads. —Shakespeare.
Office.– The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favors. —Walpole.
Opinion.– The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions. —Heinrich Heine.
Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools. —Socrates.
Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority amongst our own party: very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths, how would they get nourished and fed? —George Eliot.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth. —Joubert.
It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it. —Colton.
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity. —Montaigne.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors. —Voltaire.
If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last. —Swift.
One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is, to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy. —Burton.
It is with true opinions which one has the courage to utter as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board; they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won. —Goethe.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it. —Mme. Roland.
Opportunity.– The cleverest of all devils is opportunity. —Vieland.
Chance opportunities make us known to others, and still more to ourselves. —Rochefoucauld.
What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity. —George Eliot.
There is no man whom Fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door and flies out at the window. —Cardinal Imperiali.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. —George Eliot.
Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases. —Jeremy Collier.
A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered: "Opportunity." —Moore.
Opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish. —Lord Stanley.
You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it. —Charles Buxton.
Opposition.– The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, – men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority – demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice – comes graceful and beloved as a bride! —Emerson.
Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Oratory.– Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk. —Cicero.
Metaphor is the figure most suitable for the orator, as men find a positive pleasure in catching resemblances for themselves. —Aristotle.
Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are most loud when they are least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of Nature; she often gives us the lightning even without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. —Colton.
An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle. —Theophrastus.
When the Roman people had listened to the diffuse and polished discourses of Cicero, they departed, saying one to another, "What a splendid speech our orator has made!" But when the Athenians heard Demosthenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they quite forgot the orator, and left him at the finish of his harangue, breathing revenge, and exclaiming, "Let us go and fight against Philip!" —Colton.
Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like that of oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day. —Henry Clay.
It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client! —Goldsmith.
Originality.– Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. —Voltaire.
One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. —George Eliot.
The most original writers borrowed one from another. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto Boiardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. —Voltaire.
All originality is estrangement. —G. H. Lawes.
P
Pain.– Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical, and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former. —Heinrich Heine.
The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Pardon.– Pardon is the virtue of victory. —Mazzini.
The heart has always the pardoning power. —Madame Swetchine.
The offender never pardons. —George Herbert.
Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon. —Bulwer-Lytton.
These evils I deserve, yet despair not of his final pardon whose ear is ever open, and his eye gracious to readmit the supplicant. —Milton.
Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within. —Dryden.
Parent.– The sacred books of the ancient Persians say: If you would be holy instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you. —Montesquieu.
Partiality.– Partiality in a parent is commonly unlucky; for fondlings are in danger to be made fools, and the children that are least cockered make the best and wisest men. —L'Estrange.
As there is a partiality to opinions, which is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is also a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial to knowledge. —Locke.
Partiality is properly the understanding's judging according to the inclination of the will and affections, and not according to the exact truth of things, or the merits of the cause. —South.
Parting.– In every parting there is an image of death. —George Eliot.
Party.– He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man. —Lavater.
He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. —Colton.
Passions.– Passions makes us feel but never see clearly. —Montesquieu.
Passions are likened best to floods and streams: the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb. —Sir Walter Raleigh.
The passions are the voice of the body. —Rousseau.
The advice given by a great moralist to his friend was, that he should compose his passions; and let that be the work of reason which would certainly be the work of time. —Addison.
A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat. —Burke.
There are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation. —George Eliot.
The blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. —Longfellow.
"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire. —Bulwer-Lytton.
All the passions seek after whatever nourishes them. Fear loves the idea of danger. —Joubert.
It is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Past.– Let the dead past bury its dead. —Longfellow.
Oh vanished times! splendors eclipsed for aye! Oh suns behind the horizon that have set. —Victor Hugo.
It is to live twice, when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life. —Martial.
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. —George Eliot.
Patience.– There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience. —Bulwer-Lytton.
It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient. —George Eliot.
Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ills. —Johnson.
There's no music in a "rest," that I know of, but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too. —Ruskin.
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing. —Epictetus.
Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. —G. MacDonald.
'Tis all men's office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man's virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself. —Shakespeare.
He that hath patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing. —George Herbert.
Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines, wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot. —Joubert.
God is with the patient. —Koran.
Patience, the second bravery of man, is, perhaps, greater than the first. —Antonio de Solis.
Patience – the truest fortitude. —Milton.
Patriotism.– In peace patriotism really consists only in this – that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house. —Goethe.
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong. —Decatur.
How dear is fatherland to all noble hearts. —Voltaire.
Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever! —Daniel Webster.
There can be no affinity nearer than our country. —Plato.
Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it. —Gladstone.
Peace.– They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. —Bible.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace. —Shakespeare.
Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breed. —Spenser.
Peace gives food to the husbandman, even in the midst of rocks; war brings misery to him, even in the most fertile plains. —Menander.
Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth. —Shakespeare.
A land rejoicing and a people blest. —Pope.
Pedant.– As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too. —S. Smith.
With loads of learned lumber in his head. —Pope.
It is not a circumscribed situation so much as a narrow vision that creates pedants; not having a pet study or science, but a narrow, vulgar soul, which prevents a man from seeing all sides and hearing all things; in short, the intolerant man is the real pedant. —Richter.
Perfection.– It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it can never be reached. —Johnson.
Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness. —Alfred de Musset.
That historian who would describe a favorite character as faultless raises another at the expense of himself. Zeuxis made five virgins contribute their charms to his single picture of Helen; and it is as vain for the moralist to look for perfection in the mind, as for the painter to expect to find it in the body. —Colton.
Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle. —Michael Angelo.
He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly. I never saw a perfect man. Every rose has its thorns, and every day its night. Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds. And faults of some kind nestle in every bosom. —Spurgeon.
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more. —Tennyson.
Persecution.– Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters forever. —Hazlitt.
Perseverance.– Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds. —Bacon.
Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master. —Burke.
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way. —Jeremy Collier.
Much rain wears the marble. —Shakespeare.
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. —George Eliot.
Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius. —Bulwer-Lytton.
Perseverance is not always an indication of great abilities. An indifferent poet is invulnerable to a repulse, the want of sensibility in him being what a noble self-confidence was in Milton. These excluded suitors continue, nevertheless, to hang their garlands at the gate, to anoint the door-post, and even kiss the very threshold of her home, though the Muse beckons them not in. —Wordsworth.
Perverseness.– The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence. —George Eliot.
Philosophy.– Philosophy is the art of living. —Plutarch.
Philosophy consists not in airy schemes, or idle speculations; the rule and conduct of all social life is her great province. —Thomson.
The philosopher knows the universe and knows not himself. —Fontaine.