Modern education too often covers the fingers with rings, and at the same time cuts the sinews at the wrist.
Every man's follies are the caricature resemblances of his wisdom.
The worst education which teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that.
Colors answer feeling in man; shapes answer thought; and motion answers will.
Speech is as a pump, by which we raise and pour out the water from the great lake of Thought,--whither it flows back again.
Compliments are only lies in court clothes.
Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords.
One dupe is as impossible as one twin.
Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.
Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion.
There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.
Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.
Man is a substance clad in shadows.
Toil, feel, think, hope; you will be sure to dream enough before you die, without arranging for it.
Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.
Like earth, awake, and warm, and bright With joy the spirit moves and burns; So up to thee! O Fount of Light! Our light returns.
Poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage.
A man without earnestness is a mournful and perplexing spectacle. But it is a consolation to believe, as we must of such a one, that he is the most effectual and compulsive of all schools.
Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.
Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastic, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter.
An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.
Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.
Every fancy that we would substitute for a reality is, if we saw aright, and saw the whole, not only false, but every way less beautiful and excellent than that which we sacrifice to it.
Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.
Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.
