Showing 10 of 554088 quotes
The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale. ”
Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young. ”
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. ”
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write. ”
Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions. ”
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping. ”
Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste. ”
I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this. ”
One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do. ”
The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears. ”