Thoughts are winged. [ William Shakespeare ]
Thoughts rule the world. [ Emerson ]
Second thoughts are best. [ Proverb ]
Give thy thoughts no tongue. [ Shakespeare ]
Little moments make an hour.
Little thoughts a book,
Little seeds a tree or flower.
Water-drops a brook;
Little deeds of faith and love
Make a home for you above. [ Anonymous ]
It needs the overflow of heart
To give the lips full speech.
Think truly, and thy thoughts
Shall the world's famine feed; [ Horatius Bonar ]
Human laws reach not thoughts. [ Proverb ]
Style is the dress of thoughts. [ Chesterfield ]
Thoughts so sudden, that they seem
The revelations of a dream. [ Longfellow ]
Our best thoughts come from others. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Second thoughts, they say, are best. [ John Dryden ]
Make your best thoughts into action. [ Mme. Necker ]
Sweet souls around us watch us still,
Press nearer to our side;
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
With gentle helpings glide. [ Harriet Beecher Stowe ]
Great thoughts spring from the heart. [ Vauvenargues ]
All our dignity lies in our thoughts. [ Pascal ]
Great thoughts proceed from the heart. [ Vauvenargues ]
Still are the thoughts to memory dear. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
First thoughts are not always the best. [ Alfieri ]
Nurture your minds with great thoughts. [ Earl Of Beaconsfield ]
Words are but pictures of our thoughts. [ Dryden ]
My thoughts and I were of another world. [ Ben Jonson ]
Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts. [ William Shakespeare, Henry VI ]
In solitude all great thoughts are born. [ Moses Harvey ]
Fears of sinning let in thoughts of sin. [ Crabbe ]
Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give,
And study how to die, not how to live. [ Lord Lansdowne ]
Thoughts shut up want air.
And spoil like bales unopened to the sun. [ Edward Young ]
Great thoughts ensure musical expression. [ Emerson ]
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest. [ Euripides ]
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. [ William Shakespeare ]
Thoughts are toll-free, but not hell-free. [ German Proverb ]
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. [ John Ruskin ]
The laws of nature are the thoughts of God. [ Zschokke ]
Impromptu thoughts are mental wild flowers. [ Mme. Du Deffand ]
Kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer clouds flash forth electric fire. [ Rogers ]
Bright-eyed fancy, hovering over.
Scatters from her pictured urn.
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. [ Gray ]
And the Sabbath bell,
That over wood and wild and mountain dell
Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy
With sounds most musical, most melancholy. [ Samuel Rogers ]
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II Sc.7 ]
Great thoughts, great feelings come to them,
Like instincts, unawares. [ M. Milnes ]
Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions. [ Bishop Porteous ]
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
The ground of all great thoughts is sadness. [ Bailey ]
Those thoughts that wander through eternity. [ Milton ]
Among mortals second thoughts are the wisest. [ Euripides ]
For thoughts are so great - aren't they, sir?
They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood. [ George Eliot ]
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. [ William Cowper ]
Foul words and foul thoughts make a foul soul.
Dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
They have a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being. [ Byron ]
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]
The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. [ Lapland Proverb ]
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel. [ William Shakespeare ]
Perspicuity is the offset of profound thoughts. [ Vauvenargues ]
The temple of our purest thoughts is - silence! [ Mrs. Hale ]
Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths;
Love laps his wings on either side the heart
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts,
So that they pass not to the shrine of sound. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead! [ Longfellow ]
When our thoughts are born
Though they be good and humble, one should mind
How they are reared, or some will go astray. [ Jean Ingelow ]
O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other's goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obeyed, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. [ Denham ]
Custom forms us all.
Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief
Are consequences of our place of birth. [ Hill ]
Your thoughts close and your countenance loose. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
To live thy better, let thy worst thoughts die. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. [ Shakespeare ]
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd unfledged comrade. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. [ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Sc. 1 ]
His eloquence is classic in its style,
Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught.
And scattered like a shower of shooting stars,
That end in darkness: no; - his noble mind
Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
Fixed on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
As easily as eagles cleave the air,
And never pauses till the height is won;
And all who listen follow where he leads. [ Mrs. Hale ]
Love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams
Driving back shadows over lowering hills. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]
Oh! nature's noblest gift - my grey goosed quill:
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men! [ Byron ]
Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet. [ Bailey ]
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below? [ Shelley ]
Love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Sc. 5 ]
Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best. [ Byron ]
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. [ William Shakespeare ]
The world is a great poem, and the world's
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts. [ Bailey ]
Yes - it was love - if thoughts of tenderness.
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet - oh more than all! - untired by time.
Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile,
Could render sullen were she near to smile,
Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent
On her one murmur of his discontent;
Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part.
Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart;
Which nought removed, nor menaced to remove -
If there be love in mortals— this was love! [ Byron ]
He led on; but thoughts
Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins
Grew visible upon his swarthy brow,
And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain.
He trod less firmly; and his restless eye
Glanc'd forward frequently, as if some ill
He dared not meet were there. [ Willis ]
I have this while with leaden thoughts been pressed;
But I shall, in a more continuate time,
Strike off this score of absence. [ William Shakespeare ]
Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. [ William Shakespeare ]
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. [ Hazlitt ]
And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep.
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams.
And into glory peep. [ Vaughan ]
High-erected thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Children are the keys of Paradise;
They alone are good and wise,
Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer. [ R. H. Stoddard ]
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. [ Philip J. Bailey ]
The Alphabet Of Success
Attend carefully to details.
Be prompt in all things.
Consider well, then decide positively.
Dare to do right, fear to do wrong.
Endure trials patiently.
Fight life's battles bravely.
Go not into the society of the vicious.
Hold your integrity sacred.
Injure not another's reputation.
Join hands only with the virtuous.
Keep your mind free from evil thoughts.
Lie not for any consideration.
Make few special acquaintances.
Never try to appear what you are not.
Observe good manners.
Pay your debts promptly.
Question not the verity of a friend.
Respect the desires of your parents.
Sacrifice money rather than principle.
Touch not, taste not, handle not intoxicating drinks.
Use your leisure for improvement.
Venture not upon the threshold of wrong.
Watch carefully over your passions.
Xtend to everyone a kindly greeting.
Yield not to discouragement.
Zealously labor for the right, and success is certain. [ Ladies Home Journal ]
Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts. [ Talleyrand ]
High erected thoughts seated in the heart of courtesy. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run. [ Sir William Davenant ]
What studies please, what most delight.
And fill men's thoughts, they dream them over at night. [ Creech ]
Many men's thoughts are not acorns, but merely pebbles. [ Charles Buxton ]
Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination. [ Bacon ]
A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
He is never alone who is accompanied with noble thoughts. [ Proverb ]
Guard well thy thoughts: our thoughts are heard in heaven. [ Young ]
By entertaining good thoughts, you will keep out evil ones. [ Proverb ]
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts. [ Shelley ]
Think beautiful thoughts and your loneliness will disappear. [ Christian D. Larson ]
They are never alone who are accompanied with noble thoughts. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts. [ Bovee ]
A wicked conscience mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thoughts. [ William Shakespeare ]
Silence has been given to woman to better express her thoughts. [ Desnoyers ]
A wise man's thoughts walk within him, but a fool's without him. [ Proverb ]
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane of her still spirit. [ Tennyson ]
It is God himself who speaks to us, when noble thoughts inspire us.
Though fame is smoke, its fumes are frankincense to human thoughts. [ Byron ]
Receive your thoughts as guests, and treat your desires as children. [ Chinese Proverb ]
Live only in a great Today, whose happy thoughts weave golden hours. [ Josephine Rollett Wright ]
Good thoughts are no better than good dreams unless they be executed. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the wise among men. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Happier are the hands compassed with iron than a heart with thoughts. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Every day a little life, a blank to be inscribed with gentle thoughts. [ Rogers ]
Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly. [ Hazlitt ]
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind. [ Wordsworth ]
Though duller thoughts succeed, the bliss even of a moment still is bliss. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Surely he is not a fool that hath unwise thoughts, but he that utters them. [ Bishop Hall ]
It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. [ Emerson ]
Strong thoughts are iron nails driven in the mind, that nothing can draw out. [ Diderot ]
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower. [ Lady Blessington ]
Blest is he whose heart is the home of the great dead and their great thoughts. [ Bailey ]
And to tired limbs and over-busy thoughts,Inviting sleep and soft forgetfulness. [ Wordsworth ]
The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object. [ G. H. Lewes ]
If we stretch our thoughts as far as they can reach, eternity is still before us. [ J. Edmondson ]
To attain the height and depth of Thy eternal ways, all human thoughts come short. [ Milton ]
My thoughts, imprisoned in my secret woes, with flamy breaths do issue oft in sound. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Great thoughts and a pure heart are the things we should beg for ourselves from God. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The alphabet of a language is the key by which we unlock the thoughts of its people. [ Alabaster ]
The science of Nature initiates the human mind into the secret thoughts of Divinity. [ Mme. d'Agoult ]
It is safe to make a choice of your thoughts, scarcely ever safe to express them all. [ Barrow ]
The first, as indeed the last, nobility of education is in the rule over our thoughts. [ John Ruskin ]
Laws of nature are God's thoughts thinking themselves out in the orbits and the tides. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]
There is rosemary, that is for remembrance; and there is pansies, that is for thoughts. [ William Shakespeare ]
In waking whispers and repeated dreams, to hint pure thoughts and warn the favored soul. [ Thomson ]
Those are poets who write thoughts as fragrant as flowers, and in as many colored words. [ Mme. de Krudener ]
From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed. [ Wordsworth ]
To me the meanest flower that blows, can give thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]
Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man; only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Upon the common course of life must our thoughts and our conversation be generally employed. [ Johnson ]
Thoughts perhaps, which, like fieldmice of the soul, leap under the feet and stick like adders. [ Richter ]
In matters of conscience, first thoughts are best; in matters of prudence, last thoughts are best. [ Robert Hall ]
The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture. [ Sterne ]
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, especially the eyes. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
The native soil of our thoughts is the heart; whoso will have his fresh must draw from this spring. [ Börne ]
There are very few things in the world upon which an honest man can repose his soul, or his thoughts. [ Chamfort ]
I will govern my life and my thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and to read the other. [ Seneca ]
Chance suggests thoughts; changes deprive us of them: there is no rule for preserving or acquiring them. [ Pascal ]
O God, impress upon me the value of time, and give regulation to all my thoughts and to all my movements. [ Chalmers ]
The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed. [ Joubert ]
In human hearts what bolder thoughts can rise than man's presumption on tomorrows' dawn? Where is tomorrow? [ Young ]
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Examine your soul and its emotions, and thoughts will be to you so many glorious revelations of the Godhead. [ Nourisson ]
In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. [ Channing ]
The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all. [ Froude ]
Friend, howsoever thou earnest by this book, I will assure thee thou wert least in my thoughts when I writ it. [ Bunyan ]
It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit. [ L'Estrange ]
The history of the thoughts of men, curious on account of their infinite variety, is also sometimes instructive. [ Fontanelle ]
Haste me to know it; that I with wings as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge. [ William Shakespeare ]
I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture. [ John Burroughs ]
Poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. [ Coleridge ]
We treat God with irreverence by banishing him from our thoughts, not by referring to his will on slight occasions. [ John Ruskin ]
Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window; if heavy, it will obscure the light. [ Emerson ]
There is so much of the glare and grief of life connected with the stage that it fills me with most solemn thoughts. [ Henry Giles ]
All the thinking in the world does not bring us to thought; we must be right by nature, so that good thoughts may come. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice. [ Mazzini ]
Within the sacred walls of libraries we find the best thoughts, the purest feelings, and the most exalted imaginings of our race. [ Bovee ]
The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action. [ Dryden ]
Balm that tames all anguish, saint that evil thoughts and aims takest away, and into souls dost creep, like to a breeze from heaven. [ Wordsworth ]
Foul jealousy! that turnest love divine to joyless dread, and makest the loving heart with hateful thoughts to languish and to pine. [ Spenser ]
Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts. [ Horace ]
The custom of frequent reflection will keep their minds from running adrift, and call their thoughts home from useless unattentive roving. [ Locke ]
The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. [ Washington Irving ]
We have the command, to a great extent, over our own lot. At all events, our mind is our own possession; we can cherish happy thoughts there. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Thoughts take up no room. When they are right, they afford a portable pleasure, which one may travel with, without any trouble or encumbrance. [ Jeremy Collier ]
I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil. [ James A. Garfield ]
Steal! to be sure they may, and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, - disfigure them to make them pass for their own. [ Sheridan ]
A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it. [ Coleridge ]
Putting thoughts in writing. It resembles a tradesman taking stock, without which he never knows either what he possesses, or in what he is deficient. [ John Hunter ]
Let the day have a blessed baptism by giving your first waking thoughts into the bosom of God. The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. [ Beecher ]
Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Books give the same turn to our thoughts that company does to our conversation, without loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change. [ Swift ]
To him whose soul is more than ordinarily divine, and who has the gift of uttering lofty thoughts, you may justly concede the honourable title of poet. [ Horace ]
When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins. [ Mrs. Browning ]
God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts. [ Locke ]
Mother! The holy thoughts and chastened memories that cluster around this name, can never be so well expressed as in the calm utterance of the name itself. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. Thoughts are mightier than armies. Principles have achieved more victories than horsemen and chariots. [ William M. Paxton ]
To smell a fresh turf of earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.
[ Fuller ]
Every reader reads himself out of the book that he reads; nay, has he a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with the author's. [ Goethe ]
Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds; they ever fly by twilight; they are to be repressed, or at the least well guarded, for they cloud the mind. [ Bacon ]
Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body. [ Thomas Fuller ]
The flavor of detached thoughts depends upon the conciseness of their expression: for thoughts are grains of sugar, or of salt, that must be melted in a drop of water. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts. [ Bovee ]
Flowers are the terrestrial stars that bring down heaven to earth, and carry up our thoughts from earth to heaven; the poetry of the Creator, written in beauty and fragrance. [ Chatfield ]
Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. [ Washington Irving ]
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea. Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam. Survey our empire, and behold our home! [ Byron ]
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. [ Lamb ]
The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Music is one of the fairest and most glorious gifts of God, to which Satan is a bitter enemy; for it removes from the heart the weight of sorrow, and the fascination of evil thoughts. [ Luther ]
To divert at any time a troublesome fancy, run to thy books; they presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness. [ Fuller ]
Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that was of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. [ Bishop Sherlock ]
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already, thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action. [ Zimmermann ]
It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity. [ M. M. Brewster ]
Simple creatures, whose thoughts are not taken up, like those of educated people, with the care of a great museum of dead phrases, are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. [ Holmes ]
Man is of the earth, but his thoughts are with the stars. A pigmy standing on the outward crest of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest. [ Carlyle ]
It is from Cadmus, the inventor of the alphabet, this ingenious art comes to us of painting words, speaking to the eyes, and by the different form of traced figures, giving color and body to the thoughts. [ De Brebeuf ]
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them: but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth. [ Hazlitt ]
A man's love for his native land lies deeper than any logical expression, among those pulses of the heart which vibrate to the sanctities of home, and to the thoughts which leap up from his father's graves. [ Chapin ]
Millions of people are provided with their thoughts as with their clothes; authors, printers, booksellers, and newsmen stand, in relation to their minds, simply as shoemakers and tailors stand to their bodies. [ G. A. Sala ]
A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones. [ Swift ]
If the secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader. [ Thackeray ]
An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe: but the man who moulds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling. [ O. W. Holmes ]
In the moral world nothing is lost, as in the material world nothing is annihilated. All our thoughts and all our sentiments here below, are but the beginning of sentiments and thoughts that will be finished elsewhere. [ Joubert ]
The Carlyles were men who lavished their heart and conscience upon their work; they builded themselves, their days, their thoughts and sorrows, into their houses; they leavened the soil with the sweat of their rugged brows. [ John Burroughs ]
I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts. [ W. B. Clulow ]
Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God on this world about us; he has inscribed his thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand. [ T. Parker ]
Let your pen fail, begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task. [ G. H. Lewes ]
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition. But in this respect every author is a Spartan, being more ashamed of the discovery than of the depredation. [ Colton ]
Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters. [ Chesterfield ]
A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external Nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the labourers on the surface do not even dream. [ Longfellow ]
Words, those fickle daughters of the earth,
are the creation of a being that is finite, and when applied to explain that which is infinite, they fail; for that which is made surpasses not the maker; nor can that which is immeasurable by our thoughts be measured by our tongues. [ Colton ]
The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. [ Tuckerman ]
Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. [ Pilpay ]
Sombre thoughts and fancies often require a little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pinetrees which take root in, and frown over the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapors of fancy. [ J. F. Boyes ]
Great art dwells in all that is beautiful; but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or altering whatever is objectionable. [ John Ruskin ]
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. [ Thoreau ]
He only is great of heart who floods the world with a great affection. He only is great of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. He only is great of will who does something to shape the world to a great career; and he is greatest who does the most of all these things, and does them best. [ R. D. Hitchcock ]
Few have borrowed more freely than Gray and Milton; but with a princely prodigality, they have repaid the obscure thoughts of others, with far brighter of their own - like the ocean, which drinks up the muddy water of the rivers from the flood, but replenishes them with the clearest from the shower. [ Colton ]
There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [ John Ruskin ]
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Deliberate long before thou consecrate a friend; and when thy impartial judgment concludes him worthy of thy bosom, receive him joyfully, and entertain him wisely; impart thy secrets boldly, and mingle thy thoughts with his; he is thy very self; and use him so; if thou firmly think him faithful, thou makest him so. [ F. Quarles ]
A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition. [ Joubert ]
There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than the adoration of the beautiful. All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste without respect to the object. They purify the thoughts as tragedy purifies the passions. Their accidental effects are not worth consideration, - there are souls to whom even a vestal is not holy. [ Schlegel ]
Blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts, the food that appeases hunger, the drink that quenches thirst, the fire that warms cold, the cold that moderates heat, and, lastly, the general coin that purchases all things, the balance and weight that equals the shepherd with the king, and the simple with the wise. [ Cervantes ]
Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it. [ Hazlitt ]
By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. [ Hazlitt ]
The powers of music are felt or known by all men, and are allowed to work strangely upon the mind and the body, the passions and the blood; to raise joy and grief; to give pleasure and pain; to cure diseases, and the mortal sting of the tarantula; to give motions to the feet as well as the heart; to compose disturbed thoughts; to assist and heighten devotion itself. [ Sir W. Temple ]
Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives, for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live. [ Pascal ]
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second; for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. [ Bacon ]
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel. [ Pascal ]
A clear running brook is the best teacher of style. There is a quick forward movement - but not measured or monotonous movement - while the water is so limpid that everything is seen through the crystal medium. It seems to me that the best style is that which reveals the writer's thoughts so easily, plainly, and musically that the reader becomes engrossed in the thought or story and forgets the writer. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject. [ Blakey ]
He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously; who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them. [ Washington Irving ]
How fitting to have every day, in a vase of water on your table, the wild flowers of the season which are just blossoming. Can any house be said to be furnished without them? Shall we be so forward to pluck the fruits of Nature and neglect her flowers? These are surely her finest influences. So may the season suggest the thoughts it is fitted to suggest. Let me know what pictures Nature is painting, what poetry she is writing, what ode composing now. [ Thoreau ]
If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]
We see a world of pains taken and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and after all the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want commonsense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. [ Steele ]
It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores: for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your pocket handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it), but were frightened away by the bore. [ Byron ]
The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take commonsense quantum sufficit (in sufficient quantity); add a little application to the rules and orders of the House of Commons, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. [ Chesterfield ]
When the dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place, - when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave, - in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them, - then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned away, and left the child with God. [ Dickens ]
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]