All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
Blessed is the man who having nothing to say abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
A man carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we car...
It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.
Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less...
An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive su...
It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.
For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-awaited o...
Animals are such agreeable friendsthey ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternative vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.
Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's
He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James.No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses, said Mrs. Cadwallader.
He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him.
The days were longer then (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life— the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it— can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity in...
Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St John. They look like fragments of heaven....
But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me. What is that? said Will, rather jealous of the belief.That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and can not d...