His nice fence and his active practice. [ William Shakespeare ]
To be active is the primary vocation of man. [ Goethe ]
There is no remedy for time misspent,
No healing for the waste of idleness,
Whose very languor is a punishment,
Heavier than active souls can feel or guess. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]
Long is the calm brain active in creation;
Time only strengthens the fine fermentation. [ Goethe ]
The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazards,
And make the impossibility they fear. [ Rowe ]
Nothing is more terrible than active ignorance. [ Goethe ]
Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice. [ Ouida ]
The active part of man consists of powerful instincts. [ F. W. Newman ]
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget! [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
Active natures are rarely melancholy. Activity and melancholy are incompatible. [ Bovee ]
Hatred is active, and envy passive, disgust; there is but one step from envy to hate. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest. [ Benjamin F. Butler ]
Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world. [ Goethe ]
We learn nothing from mere hearing, and he who does not take an active part in certain subjects knows them but half and superficially. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, and cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising, as a means of health and happiness. [ Timothy Flint ]
Innocence and diligence are inseparable companions, and only those who are active in the discharge of their duties here below are blessed from on high. [ Magoon ]
I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses, - the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all. [ Thackeray ]
There is but one misfortune for a man, when some idea lays hold of him which exerts no influence upon his active life, or still more, which withdraws him from it. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Without discretion learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. [ Addison ]
Providence has clearly ordained that the only path fit and salutary for man on earth is the path of persevering fortitude - the unremitting struggle of deliberate self-preparation and humble but active reliance on divine aid. [ B. L. Magoon ]
The higher enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while without exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep. Thus sect after sect, and church after church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. [ Carlyle ]
I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. [ Emerson ]
Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. [ Hillard ]
It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result, by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence. [ G. H. Lewes ]
Weakness can never be beautiful, either morally or physically: and though the feminine type may possess greater softness and more feeling, it must be active, firm, and healthy, or it cannot be beautiful; the weak mind, distracted by alternations of feeling, and constant craving for help and sympathy from others, cannot at the same time possess that tenderness and unselfish devotion which is the loveliest trait of the female character. [ M. Martell ]
Pride looks back upon its past deeds, and calculating with nicety what it has done, it commits itself to rest; whereas humility looks to that which is before, and discovering how much ground remains to be trodden, it is active and vigilant. Having gained one height, pride looks down with complacency on that which is beneath it; humility looks up to a higher and yet higher elevation. The one keeps us on this earth, which is congenial to its nature; the other directs our eye, and tends to lift us up to heaven. [ James McCosh ]
Threescore years and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-tail but lights out.
You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer - and without prejudice - for they are not legally collectable. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
The loss of a mother is always severely felt; even though Her health may incapacitate her from taking any active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand tender endeavors to please concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it, when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends. [ Lamartine ]