Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.

The man who is not permitted to own is owned.

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at...

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, their reasons are always different.

love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.

The earth has music for those who listen.

Sanity is a madness put to good uses.

The worship of power is an old religion.

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

I stand in philosophy exactly where I stand in daily life; I should not be honest otherwise.

The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to...

To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

Depression is rage spread thin.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies...

The wisest mind hath something yet to learn.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.

With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside,...

The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaksFill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,She makes a sweeter music than is heard.