Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

N.B. Fear itself. See also H. D. Thoreau.

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.

I say, break the law.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

The only wealth is life.

I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

We were born to succeed, not to fail.

There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers.

To be awake is to be alive.

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

To reget deeply is to live afresh.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

Men have become the tools of their trade.

The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.

Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?;"Elizabeth Carpenter

The heart is forever inexperienced.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

One farmer says to me, ''You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;'' and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

There was definitely frustration about Henri's non-appearance. We weren't happy about it.