Thought is free. [ William Shakespeare, As You Like It ]

Thought is silence. [ Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan ]

Life is but thought. [ Coleridge ]

Thoughts are winged. [ William Shakespeare ]

Thoughts rule the world. [ Emerson ]

A penny for your thought. [ Swift ]

Thought alone is eternal. [ Owen Meredith ]

Our growing thought
Makes growing revelation. [ George Eliot ]

Thinking nurseth thinking. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Thought is invisible nature. [ Heine ]

We look before and after,
And sigh for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those
that tell of saddest thought [ Shelley ]

Every thought was once a poem. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Thought is parent of the dead. [ Carlyle ]

There's mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought,
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot. [ William Cowper ]

Night is the mother of Thought. [ Proverb ]

Labor is life; thought is light. [ Victor Hugo ]

Books are sepulchres of thought. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

No thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold. [ Robert Browning ]

Action is but coarsened thought. [ Amiel ]

The universe is a thought of God. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Ink is the transcript of thought. [ Lamartine ]

Young roses kindled into thought. [ Moore ]

Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought! [ Longfellow ]

Mysterious to all thought,
A mother's prime of bliss,
When to her eager lips is brought
Her infant's thrilling kiss. [ Keble ]

Thoughts so sudden, that they seem
The revelations of a dream. [ Longfellow ]

So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return. [ Shenstone ]

Our best thought came from others. [ Emerson ]

Thought is the slave of the heart. [ De Finod ]

Evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as want of heart. [ T. Hood ]

How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill! [ Sir Henry Wotton ]

Thought is deeper than all speech.
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught. [ C. P. Cranch ]

Our best thoughts come from others. [ Emerson ]

The mind grows by what it feeds on. [ J. G. Holland ]

Playful blushes, that seemed nought
But luminous escapes of thought. [ Moore ]

Whenever a noble deed is wrought.
Whenever is spoken a noble thought.
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Make your best thoughts into action. [ Mme. Necker ]

A maiden hath no tongue but thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. [ Whittier ]

Thought is the lightning of the soul. [ Mme. de Bassanville ]

Fortune, my friend, I've often thought
Is weak, if Art assist her not:
So equally all Arts are vain,
If Fortune help them not again. [ Sheridan ]

Great thoughts proceed from the heart. [ Vauvenargues ]

God blesses still the generous thought
And still the fitting word He speeds,
And truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds. [ Whittier ]

He thought the World to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the Town;
In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set - Mankind. [ Hannah More ]

The value of a thought cannot be told. [ Bailey ]

As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. [ Bible ]

No greater mischief could be wrought
Than love united to a jealous thought. [ Greene ]

Still are the thoughts to memory dear. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Every pure thought is a glimpse of God. [ Bartol ]

He that never thinks never can be wise. [ Johnson ]

Learning without thought is labor lost. [ Confucius ]

First thoughts are not always the best. [ Alfieri ]

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. [ Beaconsfield ]

Audacity of thought is seldom forgiven. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Thought will not work except in silence. [ Carlyle ]

My thoughts and I were of another world. [ Ben Jonson ]

In solitude all great thoughts are born. [ Moses Harvey ]

Lofty thought lies oft in childish play. [ Johann C. F. Von Schiller ]

But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things. [ Wordsworth ]

To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No - all that's worth a wish - a thought.
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Growing thought makes growing revelation. [ George Pallet ]

But through the heart
Should Jealousy its venom once diffuse
'Tis then delightful misery no more
But agony unmixed, incessant gall
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. [ Thomson ]

Time and thought tame the greatest grief. [ Proverb ]

Graceful to sight and elegant to thought. [ Young ]

Great thoughts ensure musical expression. [ Emerson ]

Thought discovered is the more possessed. [ Young ]

The ancestor of every action is a thought. [ Emerson ]

Expression is the dress of thought, and
Appears more decent as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed. [ Pope ]

The thought, the deadly feel, of solitude. [ Keats ]

When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak - little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day. [ T. B. Aldrich ]

A woman's thought runs before her actions. [ William Shakespeare ]

The fool saith, who would have thought it? [ Proverb ]

She thought our good-night kiss was given.
And like a lily her life did close;
Angels uncurtain'd that repose,
And the next waking dawn'd in heaven. [ Gerald Massey ]

The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful thought! [ Addison ]

Curiosity is thought on its entering edge. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought. [ Whipple ]

A delicate thought is a flower of the mind. [ Rollin ]

Bright-eyed fancy, hovering over.
Scatters from her pictured urn.
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. [ Gray ]

What I have done is due to patient thought. [ Sir Isaac Newton ]

Impromptu thoughts are mental wild-flowers. [ Mme. du Deffand ]

One thought settles a life, an immortality. [ Bailey ]

Kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer clouds flash forth electric fire. [ Rogers ]

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich. [ Thackeray ]

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought.
To teach the young idea how to shoot. [ James Thomson ]

The dome of thought, the palace of the soul. [ Byron ]

At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think. [ J. G. Saxe ]

Literature is the thought of thinking souls. [ Carlyle ]

Where penury is felt the thought is chained.
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. [ Cowper ]

Bishop Ken styled poetry thought in blossom. [ William Winter ]

A thought often makes us hotter than a fire. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

No really great man ever thought himself so. [ Hazlitt ]

And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared. [ Homer ]

The ground of all great thoughts is sadness. [ Bailey ]

Those who think must govern those that toil. [ Goldsmith ]

Those thoughts that wander through eternity. [ Milton ]

Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions. [ Bishop Porteous ]

Among mortals second thoughts are the wisest. [ Euripides ]

To bed, to bed; sleep kill those pretty eyes,
And give as soft attachment to thy senses,
As infants empty of all thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

For thoughts are so great - aren't they, sir?
They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood. [ George Eliot ]

Thought once awakened does not again slumber. [ Carlyle ]

He trudged along, unknowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went, for want of thought. [ John Dryden ]

Live long and happy, and in that thought die;
Glad for what was. [ Robert Browning ]

They only babble who practice not reflection,
I shall think - and thought is silence. [ Sheridan ]

Be great in act, as you have been in thought. [ Shakespeare ]

Clearness is the ornament of profound thought. [ Vauvenargues ]

He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man. [ James Beattie ]

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [ Wordsworth ]

One only thought can enter every head;
The thought of golf, to wit - and that engages
Men of all sizes, tempers, ranks and ages. [ G. F. Carnegie ]

My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel. [ William Shakespeare ]

A moment's thought is passion's passing knell. [ Keats ]

For highest looks have not the highest mind,
Nor haughty words most full of highest thought;
But are like bladders blown up with the wind,
That being pricked evanish into nought. [ Spenser ]

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought. [ Churchill ]

To live thy better, let thy worst thoughts die. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

Language is the close-fitting dress of Thought. [ R. C. Trench ]

We understood
Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought.
That one might almost say her body thought. [ Donne ]

His genius quite obscured the brightest ray
Of human thought, as Sol's effulgent beams
At morn's approach, extinguished all the stars. [ R. Wynne ]

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. [ Shakespeare ]

Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom. [ Emerson ]

He thought he thought, and yet he did not think,
But only echoed still the common talk,
As might an empty room. [ Walter C. Smith ]

Do you never think what wondrous beings these?
Do you never think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man ever caught! [ Longfellow ]

The colored slave (ink) that waits upon thought. [ Mrs. Balfour ]

Dreams where thought, in fancy's maze, runs mad. [ Young ]

Pride, of all others the most dangerous fault,
Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought. [ Roscommon ]

Heaven, the perfection of all that can
Be said, of thought, riches, delight or harmony.
Health, beauty; and all those not subject to
The waste of time, but in their height eternal. [ Shirley ]

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 ]

But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess
All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts,
The surest presage of the good they seek. [ Cowper ]

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more. [ Bailey ]

A spirit may be known from only a single thought. [ Swedenborg ]

Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heaven. [ Pope ]

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. [ William Shakespeare ]

One thought cannot awake without awakening others. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet. [ Bailey ]

Style is what gives value and currency to thought. [ Amiel ]

Eloquence is a pictorial representation of thought. [ Pascal ]

Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine. [ Crabbe ]

In her eyes a thought
Grew sweeter and sweeter, deepening like the dawn, -
A mystical forewarning. [ T. B. Aldrich ]

A hundred load of thought will not pay one of debts. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Two souls and one thought, two hearts and one pulse. [ Halen ]

Words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. [ Byron ]

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. [ William Shakespeare ]

My sole resources in the path I trod,
Were these - my bark - my sword - my love — my God.
The last I left in youth - He leaves me now -
And man but works His will to lay me low.
I have no thought to mock His throne with prayer,
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough - I breathe - and I can bear. [ Byron ]

High-erected thoughts, seated in a heart of courtesy. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain. [ Moore ]

Politeness is to goodness, what words are to thought. [ Joseph Joubert ]

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. [ Hazlitt ]

The invention all admired, and each, how he
To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed,
Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
Impossible. [ Milton ]

The thought of death is more cruel than death itself. [ De la Boetie ]

They are the heritage that glorious minds
Bequeath unto the world! — a glittering store
Of gems, more precious far than those he finds
Who searches miser's hidden treasures over.
They are the light, the guiding star of youth.
Leading his spirit to the realms of thought,
Pointing the way to Virtue, Knowledge, Truth,
And teaching lessons, with deep wisdom fraught.
They cast strange beauty round our earthly dreams,
And mystic brightness over our daily lot;
They lead the soul afar to fairy scenes,
Where the world's under visions enter not;
They're deathless and immortal — ages pass away,
Yet still they speak, instruct, inspire, amidst decay! [ Emeline S. Smith ]

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought. [ Dinah Muloch Craik ]

Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run. [ Sir William Davenant ]

Constant thought will overflow in words unconsciously. [ Byron ]

The man of thought strikes deepest and strikes safest. [ Savage ]

Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

I thought to bless myself, and I beat out both my eyes. [ Proverb ]

Many men's thoughts are not acorns, but merely pebbles. [ Charles Buxton ]

The thought hath good legs and the quill a good tongue. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

God put in man thought; society, action; Nature, revery. [ Victor Hugo ]

The thought has good wings, and the quill a good tongue. [ Proverb ]

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech. [ Rivarol ]

The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself. [ Lowell ]

Since you wronged me, you never had a good thought of me. [ Proverb ]

Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

To the man of thought almost nothing is really ridiculous. [ Goethe ]

Solitude dulls the thought, too much company dissipates it. [ Proverb ]

Speech is the vestment of thought and expression its armor. [ Rivarol ]

Conversation is the vent of character as well as of thought. [ Emerson ]

Ours is the age of thought; hearts are stronger than swords. [ Wendell Phillips ]

I had no thought of catching you, when I fished for another. [ Proverb ]

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action. [ Wendell Phillips ]

The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts. [ Bovee ]

No fool was ever so foolish, but some one thought him clever. [ Proverb ]

I always thought that record would stand until it was broken. [ Yogi Berra ]

A sudden thought strikes me, let us swear eternal friendship. [ Canning ]

The thought of eternity consoles us for the shortness of life. [ Malesherbes ]

In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver. [ Joubert ]

As pure in thought as angels are, to know her was to love her. [ Rogers ]

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel. [ Hare ]

We thought her dying while she slept, and sleeping when she died. [ Hood ]

All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

The pleasures of thought are remedies for the wounds of the heart. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought. [ Lowell ]

Some have been thought brave, because they were afraid to run away. [ Proverb ]

When I wanted an honest man, I never thought to go to court for him. [ Proverb ]

Poetry is the music of thought, conveyed to us in music of language. [ Chatfield ]

It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought. [ N. P. Willis ]

Thoughts shut up want air, and spoil like bales unopened to the sun. [ Young ]

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. [ Blaise Pascal ]

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? [ S. T. Coleridge ]

A single grateful thought towards heaven is the most perfect prayer. [ Lessing ]

I have often thought of death, and I find it the least of all evils. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

A picture is an intermediate something between a thought and a thing. [ Coleridge ]

Chamfort makes me laugh and think at the same time; that is true wit. [ Mme. Roland ]

I and my bosom must debate awhile, and then I would no other company. [ William Shakespeare ]

My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. [ Tennyson ]

I felt that I was in the world to do something, and I thought I must. [ Whittier ]

No man ever thought too highly of his nature or too meanly of himself. [ Young ]

Every day a little life, a blank to be inscribed with gentle thoughts. [ Rogers ]

A single grateful thought towards fiea%-en is the most perfect prayer. [ Lessing ]

Books are the beehives of thought; laconics, the honey taken from them.

He thought to have turned iron into gold, and he turned gold into iron. [ Proverb ]

Deep insight will always, like Nature, ultimate its thought in a thing. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness. [ Johnson ]

The art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words. [ Dryden ]

An index is the soul of a book; it is the key to its essence of thought. [ James Ellis ]

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. [ O. W. Holmes ]

A single grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer. [ Lessing ]

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind. [ Wordsworth ]

The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest. [ Carlyle ]

There never was so great a thought labouring in the breasts of men as now. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought. [ Beecher ]

Sunday is the core of our civilisation, dedicated to thought and reverence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature. [ Alexander Smith ]

Thought is like opium: it can intoxicate us while it leaves us broad awake. [ Amiel ]

Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation. [ Johnson ]

Man thinks, and at once becomes the master of the beings that do not think. [ Buffon ]

I thought I had given her rope enough, said Petley when he hanged his mare. [ Proverb ]

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. [ Emerson ]

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought. [ Balzac ]

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art. [ Emerson ]

The native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. [ William Shakespeare ]

The brain is the citadel of the senses: this guides the principle of thought. [ Pliny the Elder ]

The most completely lost of all days is the one on which we have not thought. [ De Finod ]

A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being. [ Whipple ]

The second, sober thought of the people is seldom wrong, and always efficient. [ Martin Van Buren ]

Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Many things impossible to thought have been by need to full perfection brought. [ Dryden ]

When the eye sees what it never saw, the heart will think what it never thought. [ Proverb ]

I thought your love eternal. Was it tied so loosely that a quarrel could divide? [ Dryden ]

Mind is the great lever. Thought is the process by which human ends are answered. [ Webster ]

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character? [ Thoreau ]

Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. [ W. R. Alger ]

If there be aught surpassing human deed or word or thought, it is a mother's love. [ Mme. de Spadara ]

In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered. [ Cicero ]

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason. [ Bacon ]

The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. [ Wordsworth ]

To dazzle let the vain design: to raise the thought, and touch the heart, be thine. [ Pope ]

He hath made a good progress in a business, that hath thought well of it beforehand. [ Proverb ]

No great thought, no great object, satisfies the mind at first view, nor at the last. [ Abel Stevens ]

The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then to fix it in form. [ Francois Delsarte ]

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? [ Mrs. Marian Lewes Cross (pen name George Eliot) ]

Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget. [ Professor Huxley ]

One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's. [ Alcott ]

Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril. [ Pascal ]

The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought and of elevated opinions. [ George Dawson ]

One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe. [ Coleridge ]

Three silences there are: the first of speech, the second of desire, the third of thought. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

There is small difference (to the eye of the world) in being Naught, and being thought so. [ Proverb ]

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, and wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. [ Mrs. Barbauld ]

Take no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. [ Jesus ]

Lifted up so high I disdained subjection, and thought one step higher would set me highest. [ Milton ]

The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking. [ Cowper ]

He smiled as men smile when they will not speak, because of something bitter in the thought. [ Mrs. Browning ]

I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first. [ George MacDonald ]

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self-examiner. [ Shaftesbury ]

It is fine to stand upon some lofty mountain thought, and feel the spirit stretch into a view. [ Bailey ]

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy. [ L'Estrange ]

God only opened His hand to give flight to a thought that He had held imprisoned from eternity. [ Timothy Titcomb ]

Thoughts perhaps, which, like fieldmice of the soul, leap under the feet and stick like adders. [ Richter ]

The mind ought sometimes to be amused, that it may the better return to thought, and to itself. [ Phaedrus ]

Thought in the mind may come forth gold or dross; when coined in words, we know its real worth. [ Young ]

When a thought is too weak to bear a simple expression, it is a sign that it deserves rejection. [ Vauvenargues ]

In matters of conscience first thoughts are best: in matters of prudence last thoughts are best. [ Robert Hall ]

Good-sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. [ John Dryden ]

Fate whirls on the bark, and the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide the lazy calm of thought. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Many a withering thought lies hid, not lost, in smiles that least befit those who wear them most. [ Byron ]

It is thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigor to the mind. [ T. Fuller ]

When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only. [ Napoleon ]

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it. [ Joubert ]

This man (Chesterfield) I thought had been a lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among lords. [ Samuel Johnson ]

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. [ Buddha ]

Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fame. [ Skobeleff ]

How delightful to make a few blots of ink, representing a little thought, bring money into one's pocket. [ Joseph G. Baldwin ]

My soul, what's lighter than a feather? Wind. Than wind? The fire. And what than fire? The mind.
What's lighter than the mind? A thought. Than thought? This bubble world. What than this bubble? Nought. [ Quarles ]

The imagination exercises a powerful influence over every act of sense, thought, reason, - over every idea. [ Latin Proverb ]

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. [ Bovee ]

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Sin seen from the thought is a diminution or loss; seen from the conscience or will, it is a pravity or bad. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think. [ Emerson ]

The eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, you might have almost said her body thought. [ Donne ]

Mind is the great lever of all things: human thought is the process by which human ends are alternately answered. [ Daniel Webster ]

I have often thought that the nature of women was inferior to that of men in general, but superior in particular. [ Greville ]

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, - it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. [ Carlyle ]

A great book that comes from a great thinker, - it is a ship of thought, deep-freighted with truth and with beauty. [ Theodore Parker ]

Mind is the great leveller of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are alternately answered. [ Daniel Webster ]

Books are loved by some merely as elegant combinations of thought; by others as a means of exercising the intellect. [ Lord Dudley ]

Thought is the first faculty of man: to express it is one of his first desires; to spread it, his dearest privilege. [ Raynal ]

Oft have I thought - jabber as he will, how learned soever, man knows nothing but what he has learned from experience! [ Wieland ]

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that, - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. [ George Eliot ]

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. [ Jesus ]

Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought Beauty too rich to go forth upon the earth without a meet alloy. [ George MacDonald ]

Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling. [ Draper ]

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 ]

In the art of design, color is to form what verse is to prose, - a more harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Lips become compressed and drawn with anxious thought, and eyes the brightest are quenched of their fires by many tears. [ S. Lover ]

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows. [ Goethe ]

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin. [ Bible ]

Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny. [ Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ]

Bees will not work except in darkness; thought will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy. [ Carlyle ]

A man of genius may sometimes suffer a miserable sterility; but at other times he will feel himself the magician of thought. [ John Foster ]

It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. [ Carlyle ]

Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council-chamber of thought. [ Basile ]

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders - these are the masters of victory. [ Burke ]

A mind full of knowledge is a mind that never fails. Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds. [ Emerson ]

Sincere wise speech{} (even) {} is but an imperfect corollary, and insignificant outer manifestation of sincere wise thought. [ Carlyle ]

Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered Paradise. [ Zoroaster ]

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. [ John Ruskin ]

Every man has some peculiar train of thought which he falls back upon when he is alone. This, to a great degree, moulds the man. [ Dugald Stewart ]

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Whatsoever the mind perceives of itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call an idea. [ Locke ]

'Twas but a dream - let it pass - let it vanish like so many others! What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless. [ Longfellow ]

Imagination is not thought, neither is fancy reflection; thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle. [ Tupper ]

Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity. [ Chesterfield ]

Ideas once planted in the brain fructify, and bear their harvest more or less bountiful and rich as they are fertilized by thought. [ Bartol ]

A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

There is an exchange of thought and feeling which is happy alike in speech and in silence. It is quietness pervaded with friendship. [ Henry van Dyke ]

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power, and organises a huge instrumentality of means. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a simple reason, - they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. [ Colton ]

Only if the spirit of man were not free, would the thought be a great one that there is a monarch of thought who rules over our souls. [ Platen ]

It is strange that thought should depend upon the stomach, and still that men with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers. [ Voltaire ]

In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second; in modern art, execution is the first thing and thought the second. [ John Ruskin ]

I have thought that in all women's deepest loves, be they ever so full of reverence, there enters sometimes much of the motherly element. [ Miss Muloch ]

The three foundations of thought: Perspicuity, amplitude and justness. The three ornaments of thought: Clearness, correctness and novelty. [ Catherall ]

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. [ Macaulay ]

Eloquence is the painting of thought; and thus, those who, after having painted it, still add to it, make a picture instead of a portrait. [ Pascal ]

God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanksgivings; and all good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer. [ Whipple ]

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas. [ Macaulay ]

There is not less wit, nor less invention, in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. [ Pierre Boyle ]

True dignity abides with him alone who, in the silent hour of inward thought, can still suspect and still revere himself in lowliness of heart. [ Wordsworth ]

To be fossilized is to be stagnant, unprogressive, dead, frozen into a solid. It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world. [ Wendell Phillips ]

Books are negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the fine lines are produced. [ O. W. Holmes ]

Logic is the science of the laws of thought, as thought - that is, of the necessary conditions to which thought, considered in itself, is subject. [ Sir W. Hamilton ]

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 ]

When a mother, as fond mothers will, vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much. [ Thackeray ]

I make little account of genealogical trees. Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fate. [ General Skobeleff ]

I hope in the future Americans are thought of as a warlike, vicious people, because I bet a lot of high schools would pick Americans as their mascot. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The Stoic thought by slandering Happiness to woo her; by shunning to win her; and proudly presumed that, by fleeing her, she would turn and follow him. [ Arliss ]

With many readers brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable mines of gold under ground. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. [ Holmes ]

Die when I may, I want it said of me, by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow. [ Lincoln ]

No earnest thinker is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. [ C. Kingsley ]

What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and thinking. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels must give. [ George Macdonald ]

He used words as mere steppingstones, upon which, with a free and youthful bound, his spirit crosses and recrosses the bright and rushing stream of thought. [ Longfellow ]

Justness of thought and style, refinement in manners, good-breeding and politeness of every kind, can come only from the trial and experience of what is best. [ Duncan ]

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. [ Froude ]

It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers. [ Coleridge ]

Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet. [ Chapin ]

It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man, that his earthly influence, which has a commencement, will never, through all ages, have an end. [ Aughey ]

Every thought and word and deed, of every human being, is followed by its inevitable consequence: for the one we are responsible; with the other we have nothing to do. [ Gail Hamilton ]

Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul; that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love; and this may be found in the humblest condition of life. [ William Ellery Channing ]

As the evening sun faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

It is delightful to transport one's self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

A beginner should study the raciest, strongest, best spoken speech, and let the printed speech alone. Write straight from the thought, without bothering about the manner. [ William D. Howells, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Thinkers are as scarce as gold; but he whose thought embraces all his subject, who pursues it uninterruptedly and fearless of consequences, is a diamond of enormous size. [ Lavater ]

Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment. [ Amiel ]

We content ourselves to present to thinking minds the original seeds from whence spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged. [ Chevalier Ramsay ]

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. [ Emerson ]

When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money. [ Ruskin ]

To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. [ Talfourd ]

Every man may be, and at some time is, lifted to a platform whence he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth, and in that mood he strings words like beads upon his thought. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, it must be prayed for. [ Thomas Arnold ]

Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason. [ Dryden ]

It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. We can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds. [ Beecher ]

I have strictly adhered to the rule of never copying. I write at once as I intend the words to stand. This leads to great precision of thought, and makes the style fresh and vigorous. [ Louisa Molesworth, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

Thou mayst as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. It is thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind. [ Thomas Fuller ]

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief. [ Epictetus ]

Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves. [ Sir W. Temple ]

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but death chiefly; and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything. [ Epictetus ]

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 ]

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 ]

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians. Considering I have no ear, nor even thought of music, the preference seems odd, and yet it is embraced on frequent reflection. [ H. Walpole ]

The night is made for tenderness; so still that the low whisper, scarcely audible, is heard like music; and so deeply pure that the fond thought is chastened as it springs, and on the lip made holy. [ N. P. Willis ]

I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men. [ Emerson ]

That inexhaustible good-nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. [ Washington Irving ]

We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence. [ Bovee ]

The tongue tells the thought of one man only, whereas the face expresses a thought of nature itself; so that every one is worth attentive observation, even though every one may not be worth talking to. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Yes, what I am to be everlastingly, I am growing to be now - now in this Present time so little thought of, this time which the sun rises and sets in, and the clock strikes in, and I wake and sleep in. [ William Mountford ]

The celebrated Boerhaave, who had many enemies, used to say that he never thought it necessary to repeat their calumnies. They are sparks, said he, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. [ Disraeli ]

Beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt transmit to the whole future. [ Carlyle ]

Not only so, but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth. [ Whewell ]

The nightingale, if she should sing by day, when every goose is cackling, would be thought no better a musician than the wren. How many things by season seasoned are to their right praise and true perfection! [ Shakespeare ]

We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, Drink, and away; but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory. [ Tuckerman ]

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought. [ Theodore T. Munger ]

Poetry is musical thought, thought of a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of a thing, detected the melody that lies hidden in it, ... the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. [ Carlyle ]

When I heard that trees grow a new ring for each year they live, I thought, we humans are kind of like that: we grow a new layer of skin each year, and after many years we are thick and unwieldy from all our skin layers. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters. [ Nodier ]

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 ]

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]

Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several - from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. [ La Bruyere ]

The vengeful thought that has root merely in the mind is but a dream of idlest sort which one clear day will dissipate; while revenge, the passion, is a disease of the heart which climbs up, up to the brain, and feeds itself on both alike. [ Lew Wallace ]

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Error soon passes away, unless upheld by restraint on thought. History tells us (and the lesson is invaluable) that the physical force which has put down free inquiry has been the main bulwark of the superstitions and illusions of past ages. [ Channing ]

Genius is that power of man which by its deeds and actions gives laws and rules; and it does not, as used to be thought, manifest itself only by over-stepping existing laws, breaking established rules, and declaring itself above all restraint. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill at the same moment; but a moment is room enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outflash of a murderous thought, and the sharp backward stroke of repentance. [ George Eliot ]

I had fifteen years' apprenticeship on the press of New York, writing editorials upon every conceivable subject, often at a few minutes notice, acquiring in this way rapid thought and rapid expression. ... The proof of genius lies in continuity. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

How dear the sure counsel of a present friend, whose heavenly power failing, the lonely one sinks in silence; for earnest thought and resolution, locked within his breast, are slowly ripened; the presence of the loved one soon warms them into being. [ Goethe ]

Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial, but at least it is not so superficial as thought. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven's door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there. [ Rutherford ]

Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. But the direct contrary I believe to be the case. Rude periods have that grossness of manners, which is as unfriendly to virtue as luxury itself. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished. [ Warton ]

As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, from glory to glory - could we desire more? [ Bishop R. S. Foster ]

Man gains wider dominion by his intellect than by his right arm. The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs, its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages. [ Chapin ]

It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures, or at least who are thought so, mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind propitious offerings to that Deity whose works are all light and lustre and harmony and loveliness. [ Lady Morgan ]

Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought - the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven. [ Longfellow ]

Nowadays enthusiasm is accounted folly; truth, cynicism; dissimulation, self-control; stiffness of manners, dignity; deception, cleverness; hypocrisy, decency; selfishness, economy; freedom of thought, effrontery; and superstition, the prop of human morals. What progress in language!

Poetry can make even the thought of death beautiful, and the sadness of bereavement not without a certain pleasure. Great poets have elicited from the sternest suffering a principle of enjoyment. Sublime faith and earnest love can conjure spirits the most lovely from the darkest abyss. [ Tuckerman ]

Resistance ought never to be thought of but when an utter subversion of the laws of the realm threatens the whole frame of our constitution, and no redress can otherwise be hoped for. It therefore does, and ought for ever, to stand in the eye and letter of the law as the highest offence. [ Walpole ]

Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light - instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremeties of the earth. [ Lamartine ]

We have often thought it strange that moralists should have written and spoken of the mutability of human life as if it were a thing to be dreaded and mourned over; to our mind, mutability is the soul of poetry, and the source of nearly all the most delightful and sacred pleasures of life. [ Stubbs ]

Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a 'shell' if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The productions of the press, fast as steam can make and carry them, go abroad through all the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder. It is an additional tongue of steam and lightning, by which a man speaks his first thought, his instant argument or grievance, to millions in a day. [ Chapin ]

The flitting sunbeam has been grasped and made to do man's bidding in place of the painter's pencil. And although Franklin tamed the lightning, yet not until yesterday has its instantaneous flash been made the vehicle of language: thus in the transmission of thought annihilating space and time. [ Professor Robinson ]

Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]

Color, in the outward world, answers to feeling in man; shape, to thought; motion, to will. The dawn of day is the nearest outward likeness of an act of creation; and it is, therefore, also the closest type in nature for that in us which most approaches to creation - the realization of an idea by an act of the will. [ John Sterling ]

What we call genius may, perhaps, in more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. For this reason it is called a seer, and hence its songs have been prophecies. [ Simms ]

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner! We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]

They that have read about everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections, - we must I chew them over again. [ Channing ]

Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years. I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay. [ Barry Cornwall ]

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 ]

No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, in regulating his life, but that circumstances, time and experience would teach him something new, and apprize him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted he knew nothing; and that those ideas which in theory appeared the most advantageous were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether inapplicable. [ Terence ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us. [ Lowell ]

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 ]

Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! [ Emerson ]

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. [ Emerson ]

Two things a master commits to his servant's care - the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost. Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it. [ John Flavel ]

Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gesture or quick movement inspires involuntary disrespect. One looks for a moment at a cascade; but one sits for hours, lost in thought, and gazing upon the still water of a lake. A deliberate gale, gentle manners, and a gracious tone of voice - all of which may be acquired - give a mediocre man an immense advantage over those vastly superior to him. To be bodily tranquil, to speak little, and to digest without effort are absolutely necessary to grandeur of mind or of presence, or to proper development of genius. [ Balzac ]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know. He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: This story isn't too long. But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, Uh-oh, this story is getting long. But then the story was over, and I said to myself: You know, that story wasn't too long after all. I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me, I said. I'm off the team, aren't I? Well, said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times. It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]