Anger punishes itself. [ Proverb ]

'Tis life itself to love. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Absurdity refutes itself. [ Bartholin ]

Kindness is virtue itself. [ Lamartine ]

Time is itself an element. [ Goethe ]

Virtue is built upon itself. [ Proverb ]

The heart gnawing on itself. [ Mme. du Deffand ]

Labour itself is a pleasure. [ Motto ]

Folly is often sick of itself. [ Proverb ]

A dream itself is but a shadow. [ William Shakespeare ]

Art needs no spur beyond itself. [ Victor Hugo ]

Slander flings stones at itself. [ Proverb ]

Misery makes sport to mock itself. [ William Shakespeare ]

Genius is ever a riddle to itself. [ Richter ]

Genius is ever a secret to itself. [ Carlyle ]

When time itself shall be no more. [ Addison ]

Nothing anchors itself fast for us. [ Pascal ]

Hell itself must yield to industry. [ Ben Jonson ]

Too much rest itself becomes a pain. [ Homer ]

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
Nor voice, nor sound betrays
Its deep, impassioned gaze. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion ]

Love gives itself, but is not bought. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion ]

Life is good, but not life in itself. [ Owen Meredith ]

A soul exasperated in ills, falls out
With everything, its friend, itself. [ Addison ]

Loan oft loses both itself and friend. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself. [ Proverb ]

Want supplieth itself of what is next. [ Bacon ]

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight.
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light. [ Cowper ]

Pride eradicates all vices but itself. [ Emerson ]

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself. [ Sir James Mackintosh ]

See how the orient dew
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses
(Yet careless of its mansion new
For the clear region where it was born)
Round in itself incloses,
And in its little globe's extent
Frames, as it can, its native element. [ Andrew Marvell ]

Never anger made good guard for itself. [ William Shakespeare ]

Folly is never long pleased with itself. [ Proverb ]

The eye sees not itself
But by reflection, by some other things. [ William Shakespeare ]

Even sugar itself may spoil a good dish. [ Proverb ]

O, if so much beauty doth reveal
Itself in every vein of life and nature.
How beautiful must be the Source itself,
The Ever Bright One. [ Tegner ]

Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself. [ Goldsmith ]

When the pot boils over it cools itself. [ Proverb ]

Danger itself the best remedy for danger. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Subtlety set up a trap and caught itself. [ Proverb ]

Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish,
And in itself to ashes burn. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Forsaken ]

Honesty needs no pains to set itself off. [ Edward Moore ]

Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom. [ Montaigne ]

Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself. [ William Shakespeare ]

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Murder itself is past all expiation,
The greatest crime that nature doth abhor. [ Goffe ]

Fortune makes quick dispatch, and in a day
May strip you bare as beggary itself. [ Cumberland ]

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. [ Dryden ]

Distrust and darkness of a future state
Make poor mankind so fearful of their fate,
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. [ John Dryden ]

Love's of itself too sweet; the best of all
Is when love's honey has a dash of gall. [ Herrick ]

Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power, - under makers. [ Bailey ]

To the mind,
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise. [ Byron ]

The world itself makes us sick of the world. [ Bossuet ]

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. [ Milton ]

What the soul is, the soul itself knows not. [ Cicero ]

Obedience completes itself in understanding. [ Phillips Brooks ]

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch enchanter's wand! itself a nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master hand.
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Virtue itself escapes not calumnious strokes. [ William Shakespeare ]

Idleness must thank itself if it go barefoot. [ Proverb ]

I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated,
Especially since it lives and lets me live. [ Goethe ]

A guilty conscience never thinks itself safe. [ Proverb ]

Rust consumes iron, and envy consumes itself. [ Danish Proverb ]

The divine essence itself is love and wisdom. [ Swedenborg ]

Around her shone
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone.
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face.
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul. [ Byron ]

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress;
And, as the evening twilight fades away.
The stars are seen by night, invisible by day. [ Longfellow ]

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so:
For sorrow's eye glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects. [ William Shakespeare ]

Genius is ever the greatest mystery to itself. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

That I might live alone once with my gold!
Oh 't is a sweet companion I kind and true!
A man may trust it, when his father cheats him,
Brother, or friend, or wife. O wondrous pelf.
That which makes all men false, is true itself. [ Jonson ]

It is a sorry goose that will not baste itself. [ Proverb ]

Innocence itself hath sometimes need of a mask. [ Proverb ]

Love's of a strangely open simple kind,
And thinks none sees it 'cause itself is blind. [ Cowley ]

Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. [ William Shakespeare ]

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till, by broad spreading it disperse to nought. [ William Shakespeare ]

No age ever seemed the age of Romance to itself. [ Carlyle ]

Lose not the time that offers itself by praying. [ Ovid ]

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man. [ Addison ]

Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so. [ William Shakespeare ]

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet.
The basest weed outbraves its dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. [ William Shakespeare ]

No book was ever written down by any but itself. [ Bentley ]

Every sprat, now-a-days, calls itself a herring. [ Proverb ]

Even the lion has to defend itself against flies. [ German Proverb ]

How does our will become sanctified?
By conforming itself unreservedly to that of God. [ Fenelon ]

'Tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself. [ William Shakespeare ]

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 ]

Falsehood avails itself of haste and uncertainty. [ Tacitus ]

Love has no age, as it is always renewing itself. [ Pascal ]

It is in worldly accidents.
As in the world itself, where things most distant
Meet one another: Thus the east and west.
Upon the globe a mathematical point
Only divides: Thus happiness and misery.
And all extremes, are still contiguous. [ Denham ]

A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. [ Emerson ]

Virtue itself without good manners, is laughed at. [ Proverb ]

It is the spirit which builds for itself the body. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Tomorrow will I live, the fool does say:
Today itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday. [ Cowley ]

Character is a thing that will take care of itself. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]

What is highest and noblest in man conceals itself. [ Richter ]

'Tis now the very witching time of night
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. [ William Shakespeare ]

Pride hath no other glass to show itself but pride. [ William Shakespeare ]

The eye that sees all things else, sees not itself. [ Proverb ]

Calumny and conjecture may injure innocence itself. [ Proverb ]

When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion. [ Napoleon I ]

Revenge is sweeter than life itself. So think fools. [ Juvenal ]

A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes. [ George Eliot ]

Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. [ John Dryden ]

The file grates other things; but rub itself out too. [ Proverb ]

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

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise. [ Leigh Hunt ]

The tree that grows slowly keeps itself from another. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Age is suspicious, but is not itself often suspected. [ Zimmermann ]

Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

Nothing can ferment itself to clearness in a colander. [ Carlyle ]

Let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent. [ William Shakespeare ]

Haste trips up its own heels, fetters and stops itself. [ Seneca ]

Hope itself is a pain, while it is overmatched by fear. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

The tongue breaks the bone, though it hath none itself. [ Proverb ]

That government is best which makes itself unnecessary. [ W. V. Humboldt ]

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

The corn hides itself in the snow as an old man in furs. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Around her shone The light of love, the purity of grace.
The mind, the music breathing from her face;
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole;
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul! [ Byron ]

Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants. [ Boston ]

Liberty is majesty, more royal even than royalty itself! [ E. P. Day ]

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite. [ Bancroft ]

Choler is the only unruly passion that justifies itself. [ Proverb ]

Anger is like rain which breaks itself whereon it falls. [ Seneca ]

The pomp of death is far more terrible than death itself. [ Nathaniel Lee ]

Virtue is of worth, by itself alone; and so is not birth. [ Proverb ]

Fame is the shame of immortality, and is itself a shadow. [ Young ]

Wisdom alone is a science of other sciences and of itself. [ Plato ]

A greater succession of events presents itself to my muse. [ Virgil ]

A whetstone cannot itself cut, but yet it makes tools cut. [ Proverb ]

It is an unhappy wit that stirs up enemies against itself. [ Proverb ]

The ideal itself is but truth clothed in the forms of art. [ Octave Feuillet ]

Charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor. [ German Proverb ]

The mind alone is in fault which can never fly from itself. [ Horace ]

A wounded conscience is able to unparadise paradise itself. [ ? ]

The fish by struggling in the net, hampers itself the more. [ Proverb ]

Absolutism is tolerant, only because it knows itself mighty. [ A. de Gasparin ]

Perfect experience must itself embrace theoretical knowledge. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The anticipation of pleasure often equals the pleasure itself. [ Fabre d'Eglantine ]

No golden age ever called itself golden, but only expected one. [ Jean Paul ]

Even ill luck itself is good for something in a wise man's hand. [ Proverb ]

That charity which longs to publish itself, ceases to be charity. [ Hutton ]

Impertinent and lavish talking is in itself a very vicious habit. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason. [ Hazlitt ]

Nature has given us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself. [ Seneca ]

Abuse does not hinder the use of a thing that is in itself lawful. [ Proverb ]

Calumny will sear virtue itself; these shrugs, these hums and ha's. [ Shakespeare ]

Wisdom itself is not ashamed to be sprightly and gay upon occasion. [ Proverb ]

Love is a fever, of which the delirium is to believe itself eternal. [ Mme. Cottin ]

Beauty itself doth itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator. [ William Shakespeare ]

If you light the fire at both ends, the middle will shift for itself. [ Proverb ]

But revenge is a blessing sweeter than life itself; so rude men feel. [ Juv ]

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. [ Herder ]

Life itself is a bubble and a scepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. [ Emerson ]

The mind doth shape itself to its own wants, and can bear all things. [ Joanna Baillie ]

Love is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath made. [ Sir T. Overbury ]

The crickets sing, and man's overlabored sense repairs itself by rest. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is impossible that beauty should ever distinctly appreciate itself. [ Goethe ]

No cheerfulness can ever be produced by effort which is itself painful. [ Goldsmith ]

Revenge, at first though sweet, bitter ere long, back on itself recoils. [ Milton ]

Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself. [ Hosea Ballou ]

The soul reveals itself in the voice only.... It is audible, not visible. [ Longfellow ]

Truth does not conform itself to us, but we most conform ourselves to it. [ M. Claudius ]

If grief is to be mitigated, it must either wear itself out or be shared. [ Madame Swetchine ]

The sun passeth through pollutions, and itself remains as pure as before. [ Bacon ]

Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, love gives itself, but is not bought. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Faults of ignorance are excuseable only, where the ignorance itself is so. [ Proverb ]

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [ Quintilian ]

Truth itself shall lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none. [ South ]

In delicate souls, love never presents itself but under the veil of esteem. [ Mme. Roland ]

Ambition persevers in the desire of acquiring power, genius flags of itself. [ Madame De Stael ]

Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, it is greatness itself. [ C. N. Bovee ]

'Tis the fate of the noblest soul to sigh vainly for a reflection of itself. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Talent forms itself in secret; character, in the great current of the world. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Well-gotten wealth may lose itself, but the ill-gotten loses its master also. [ Cervantes ]

The mind yearns after what is gone, and loses itself in dreaming of the past. [ Petron ]

It is not affliction itself, but affliction rightly borne, that does us good. [ Aughey ]

Friendship needs to be rooted in respect, but love can live upon itself alone. [ Ouida ]

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself. [ Burke ]

Hunger makes everything sweet except itself, for want is the teacher of habits. [ Antiphanes ]

The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself. [ Lavater ]

Shun idleness: it is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals. [ Voltaire ]

It is heaven itself that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man. [ Addison ]

Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering. [ Quintilian ]

Her full heart - its own interpreter - translates itself in silence on her cheek. [ Amelia B. Welby ]

The world more frequently recompenses the appearance of merit, than merit itself. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Anger is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces. [ Seneca ]

Nothing in nature, much less conscious being, was ever created solely for itself. [ Young ]

The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies. [ Macaulay ]

Beauty comes, we scarce know how, as an emanation from sources deeper than itself. [ Shairp ]

Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions; it is itself the greatest distinction. [ Bovee ]

The people of this world having been once deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself. [ Hitopadesa ]

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

Love of truth shows itself in being able everywhere to find and value what is good. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly. [ Horace ]

The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie. [ Pope ]

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. [ Coke ]

Let us fear the worst, but work with faith; the best will always take care of itself. [ Victor Hugo ]

Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life; it points to another world. [ Daniel Webster ]

The first essential to success in the art you practice is respect for the art itself. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Where there is slavery in the heart, it will soon show itself in the outward conduct. [ Seume ]

It is a shame for the tongue to cast itself upon the uncertain pardon of other's ears. [ Bishop Hall ]

If we succeed in acquiring the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow. [ Sir John Lubbock ]

Hatred itself may be a praiseworthy emotion if provoked in us by a lively love of good. [ Joubert ]

And the weak soul, within itself unblessed, leans for all pleasure on another's breast. [ Goldsmith ]

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. [ Hazlitt ]

This is an art which does mend nature, - change it rather; but the art itself is nature. [ William Shakespeare ]

Preceptive wisdom that has not been vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life. [ J. G. Holland ]

Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reasoning on things above reason. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Two souls, alas! dwell in my breast; the one struggles to separate itself from the other. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Faust." ]

There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it. [ Montaigne ]

Interest speaks all languages, and acts all parts, even that of disinterestedness itself. [ Rochefoucauld ]

In clothes clean and fresh there is a kind of youth with which age should surround itself. [ Joubert ]

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications. [ Montaigne ]

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

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to. [ Zimmermann ]

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. [ Proverb ]

A wise man likes that best, that is itself; Not that which only seems, though it look fairer. [ Middleton ]

Let the character as it began be preserved to the last; and let it be consistent with itself. [ Horace ]

The mind wishes for what it has missed, and occupies itself with retrospective contemplation. [ Petronius Arbiter ]

Out of the same garden-mould grows the weed as the flower, and the weed flaunts itself abroad. [ Bodenstedt ]

There is in some minds a nucleus of error which attracts and assimilates everything to itself. [ Voltaire ]

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

Truth is like God; it reveals itself not directly; we must divine it out of its manifestations. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath. [ Thomas Fuller ]

Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Whatever passes away is too vile to be the price of time, which is itself the price of eternity. [ Massillon ]

Rash, inexperienced youth holds itself a chosen instrument, and allows itself unbounded license. [ Goethe ]

Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out. [ Herder ]

Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Clouds are the veil behind which the face of day coquettishly hides itself, to enhance its beauty. [ Richter ]

There is no arena is which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation. [ Pascal ]

It is enough for thee to know what each day wills; and what each day wills the day itself will tell. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

There are no rules for friendship; it must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than love. [ Hazlitt ]

How indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil. [ Carlyle ]

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree. [ Rutherford ]

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed. [ Joubert ]

To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself. [ Burke ]

Possession is the touchstone of love: true love finds new ardor, frivolous love extinguishes itself in it. [ Panage ]

Doubt insinuates itself into a soul that is dreaming; faith comes down into one that struggles and suffers.

They begin with making falsehood appear like truth, and end with making truth itself appear like falsehood. [ Shenstone ]

Human reason has so little confidence in itself that it always looks for a precedent to justify its decrees. [ De Finod ]

Night bringeth sleep, and spreadeth itself over the crowds of weary men, and giveth rest to the whole earth. [ Apollonius Rhodius ]

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy. [ Ouida ]

The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear. [ Goethe ]

To a father who loves his children victory has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion. [ Napoleon I ]

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself. [ Izaak Walton ]

It is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul. [ Cicero ]

The age we live in is the true age of gold; by gold men attain to the highest honour, and win even love itself. [ Ovid ]

Since the invention of printing no state can now any longer be formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself. [ Jean Paul ]

Society does not exist for itself, but for the individual; and man goes into it, not to lose, but to find himself. [ Phillips Brooks ]

Perfect life is ever in one's acts to deal with innocence, which proves itself in doing wrong to no one but itself. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically, and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment. [ A. B. Alcott ]

Spoons and skimmers, you can be undistinguishably together; but vases and statues require each a pedestal for itself. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage. [ Sterling ]

Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong. [ Schiller ]

Revenge is barren of itself; itself is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its saiety, despair. [ Schiller ]

There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue. [ Pope ]

There is no passion which steals into the heart more imperceptibly, and covers itself under more disguises, than pride. [ Addison ]

We speak of profane arts, but there are none properly such; every art is holy in itself; it is the son of Eternal Light. [ Tegner ]

Man ought always to have something which he prefers to life; otherwise life itself will appear to him tiresome and void. [ Seume ]

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself. [ Cicero ]

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. [ Abraham Lincoln ]

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality. [ T. W. Higginson ]

Chance is but a mere name, and really nothing in itself; a conception of our minds, and only a compendious way of speaking. [ Bentley ]

An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. [ Charles Dickens ]

Leaves are the Greek, flowers the Italian, phase of the spirit of beauty that reveals itself through the flora of the globe. [ T. Starr King ]

Music cleanses the understanding, inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The fragrance of the flower is never borne against the breeze; but the fragrance of human virtues diffuses itself everywhere. [ Ramayana ]

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real. [ Pascal ]

The mind is the master over every kind of fortune: itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery. [ Seneca ]

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant. [ Pascal ]

For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license. [ Montaigne ]

One can never know at the first moment what may, at a future time, separate itself from the rough experience as true substance. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death. [ Thomas Paine ]

Happy the man to whom Heaven has given a morsel of bread without his being obliged to thank any other for it than Heaven itself. [ Cervantes ]

True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting. [ Cicero ]

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable; and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed. [ Colton ]

No conquest can ever become permanent which does not withal show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors. [ Carlyle ]

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul. [ Georges Sand ]

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

True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself - if I may be allowed the expression - than to itself. [ Greville ]

If judges would make their decisions just, they should behold neither plaintiff, defendant, nor pleader, but only the cause itself. [ Livingston ]

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 ]

There is a mean in all things. Even virtue itself hath its stated limits; which not being strictly observed, it ceases to be virtue. [ Horace ]

Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself. [ Shaftesbury ]

Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself: for every guilty person is his own hangman. [ Seneca ]

Covetousness, by a greediness of getting more, deprives itself of the true end of getting; it loses the enjoyment of what it has got. [ Sprat ]

There are no pleasures where women are not; and with the French, champagne itself has no flavor, unless served by the hand of beauty. [ Romieu ]

Transitory is all human work, small in itself, contemptible; only the worker thereof and the spirit that dwelt in him is significant. [ Carlyle ]

Have I a religion, have I a country, have I a love, that I am ready to die for? are the first trial questions to itself of a true soul. [ John Ruskin ]

Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation, for sleep itself is recreation. Add not, therefore, sauce to sauces. [ Fuller ]

It would take long to enumerate how great an amount of crime was everywhere perpetrated; even the report itself came short of the truth. [ Ovid ]

Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions. [ C. H. Spurgeon ]

The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to interest. [ Coleridge ]

Nature gives healthy children much; how much! Wise education is a wise unfolding of this; often it unfolds itself better of its own accord. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! [ Sterne ]

I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers originally grew. [ Karl Ottfried Muller ]

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. [ Nathaniel Hawthorne ]

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. [ Walter Scott ]

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded. [ Montesquieu ]

The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself. [ Seneca ]

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity. [ Montaigne ]

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 ]

Happy is he to whom his business itself becomes a puppet, who at length can play with it, and amuse himself with what his situation makes his duty. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. [ Burke ]

That single effort by which we stop short in the down-hill path to perdition is of itself a greater exertion of virtue than a hundred acts of justice. [ Goldsmith ]

God multiplies intelligence, which communicates itself, like fire, ad infinitum. Light a thousand torches at one touch, the flame remains always the same. [ Joubert ]

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 ]

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself. [ Milton ]

It is the great error of reformers and philanthropists in our time to nibble at the consequences of unjust power, instead of redressing the injustice itself. [ J. S. Mill ]

We live only on debris; instead of despair, we have indifference; love itself is treated as an ancient illusion. Where has the soul of the world taken refuge? [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Government arrogates to itself that it alone forms men.... Everybody knows that Government never began anything. It is the whole world that thinks and governs. [ Wendell Phillips ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have leisure and a quiet mind. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

Mother love hath this unlikeness to any other love: Tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice. [ Lew Wallace ]

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past. [ Ruskin ]

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. [ George Eliot ]

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year. [ Horace Mann ]

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father, the former has intellect; the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury. [ Schopenhauer ]

Brevity is the body and soul of wit. It is wit itself, for it alone isolates sufficiently for contrasts; because redundancy or diffuseness produces no distinctions. [ Jean Paul Richter ]

Grief sharpens the understanding and strengthens the soul, whereas joy seldom troubles itself about the former, and makes the latter either effeminate or frivolous. [ F. Schubert ]

Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. [ Emerson ]

What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller? [ Landor ]

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself. [ Landor ]

By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused: the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint. [ Propertius ]

I am of opinion that there are no proverbial sayings which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences. [ Cervantes ]

In human life there is a constant mutability; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate; life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. [ Plutarch ]

Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. [ Lowell ]

He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle: and whatever praises itself but in the deed devours the deed in the praise. [ William Shakespeare ]

Life is arid and terrible; repose is a chimera; prudence useless; reason itself serves only to dry up the heart. There is but one virtue - the eternal sacrifice of self. [ George Sand ]

It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues. [ Simms ]

For it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. [ William Shakespeare ]

Truth is always consistent with itself and needs nothing to help it out; it is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware. [ Tillotson ]

Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which selfrighteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself. [ J. G. Holland ]

The useful encourages itself; for the multitude produce it, and no one can dispense with it: the beautiful must be encouraged; for few can set it forth, and many need it. [ Goethe ]

Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity; it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye, - glorious indeed in itself, but not proportioned to such an instrument. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The little mind who loves itself will write and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence. [ Goldsmith ]

This is eternal life; a life of everlasting love, showing itself in everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life of God, and hath eternal life. [ Charles Kingsley ]

As a tract of country narrowed in the distance expands itself when we approach, thus the way to our near grave appears to us as long as it did formerly when we were far off. [ Richter ]

Friendship, unlike love, which is weakened by fruition, grows up, thrives, and increases by enjoyment; and being of itself spiritual, the soul is reformed by the habit of it. [ Montaigne ]

In human life there is a constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. [ Plutarch ]

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. [ Bible ]

The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance; but the soul reveals itself in the voice only. [ Longfellow ]

Nature has given to each one all that as a man he needs, which it is the business of education to develop, if, as most frequently happens, it does not develop better of itself. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

If ever this free people, if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office - that is a way to live without work. [ Abraham Lincoln ]

To the understanding of anything, two conditions are equally required - intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. [ Carlyle ]

No barriers, no masses of matter, however enormous, can withstand the powers of the mind; the remotest corners yield to them; all things succumb, the very heaven itself is laid open. [ Manilius ]

National character varies as it fades under invasion or corruption; but if ever it glows again into a new life, that life must be tempered by the earth and sky of the country itself. [ John Ruskin ]

Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. [ John Ruskin ]

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current. [ Fielding ]

Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. [ Macaulay ]

Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature. [ James Freeman Clarke ]

Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand. [ Bacon ]

Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent and divine. [ Robert Hall ]

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him. [ Rutherford ]

Heaven must scorn the humility which we telegraph thither by genuflection; it must prefer the manliness that stands by all created gifts, and looks itself in the face without pretense of worship. [ John Weiss ]

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 ]

The mind has a certain vegetative power, which cannot be wholly idle. If it is not laid out and cultivated into a beautiful garden, it will of itself shoot up in weeds or flowers of a wild growth. [ Steele ]

The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray. [ Willmott ]

Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints. [ Dryden ]

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 ]

Doubt is not itself a crime. All manner of doubt, inquiry about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind on the object it is getting to know about. [ Carlyle ]

Monotony, even under circumstances least favourable to the usual elements of happiness, becomes a happiness in itself, growing, as it were, unseen, out of the undisturbed certainty of peculiar customs. [ Lord Lytton ]

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 ]

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]

People seem to think themselves in some ways superior to heaven itself, when they complain of the sorrow and want round about them. And yet it is not the devil for certain who puts pity into their hearts. [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself. [ Froude ]

Love, when founded in the heart, will show itself in a thousand unpremeditated sallies of fondness; but every cool deliberate exhibition of the passion only argues little understanding or great insincerity. [ Goldsmith ]

The centuries are all lineal children of one another; and often, in the portrait of early grandfathers, this and the other enigmatic feature of the newest grandson will disclose itself, to mutual elucidation. [ Carlyle ]

It is now the very witching time of night; when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, and do such business as the bitter day would quake to look on. [ William Shakespeare ]

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine. [ Channing ]

The human heart is like a millstone in a mill: when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then 'tis itself it grinds and wears away. [ Martin Luther ]

Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind. [ Shaftesbury ]

We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder. [ Emerson ]

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words - mank and ind. What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Truth only is prolific. Error, sterile in itself, produces only by means of the portion of truth which it contains. It may have offspring, but the life which it gives, like that of the hybrid races, cannot be transmitted. [ Madame Swetchine ]

There is to the poetical sense a ravishing prophecy and winsome intimation in flowers, that now and then, from the influence of mood or circumstances, reasserts itself like the reminiscence of childhood, or the spell of love. [ H. T. Tuckerman ]

Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head. [ Charron ]

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it. [ Seneca ]

Real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think one becomes all nose or all forehead, or something horrid. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

No improvement that takes place if either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in. reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other. [ Colton ]

Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. The observer forgets the window in the landscape it displays. A fine style gives the view of fancy - its figures, its trees, or its palaces, - without a spot. [ Willmott ]

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. [ Addison ]

The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds, and bruises the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat in it, it still grinds on; but then it is itself it grinds, and slowly wears away. [ M. Luther ]

In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. [ Franklin ]

I pick up favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. Of these there is a very favourite one from Thomson: Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose. [ Burns ]

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 ]

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 ]

No good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. [ John Ruskin ]

One could not wish any man to fall into a fault; yet it is often precisely after a fault, or a crime even, that the morality which is in a man first unfolds itself, and what of strength he as a man possesses, now when all else is gone from him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Hate is of all things the mightiest divider, nay, is division itself. To couple hatred, therefore, though wedlock try all her golden links, and borrow to her aid all the iron manacles and fetters of law, it does but seek to twist a rope of sand. [ Milton ]

Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature, - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz. the mind and the soul of man. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaeton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the bee itself would have desired such a death. [ Martial ]

The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labours to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy. [ Zimmermann ]

Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquillity and peace. [ Cicero ]

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]

Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition allies itself to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vitality of earthly desires we become superstitious, and by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious. [ Mme. de Staël ]

In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird, - all is there for itself. Only because we think that all things have a relation to us, do they appear justifiable or otherwise. [ Auerbach ]

Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses to reflect on itself or its deeds. Many are sincere without being simple; they do not wish to be taken for other than they are, but they are always afraid of being taken for what they are not. [ Fénelon ]

Genius has privileges of its own; it selects an orbit for itself; and be this never so eccentric, if it is indeed a celestial orbit, we mere star-gazers must at last compose ourselves, must cease to cavil at it, and begin to observe it and calculate its laws. [ Carlyle ]

The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

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 ]

Let us pity the wicked man; for it is very sad to seek happiness where it does not exist. Let our compassion express itself in efforts to bring him gently back to sacred principle, and if he persist, let us pity him the more for a blindness so fatal to himself. [ De Charnage ]

Two qualities are demanded of a statesman who would direct any great movement of opinion in which he himself takes a part; he must have a complete understanding of the movement itself, and he must be animated by the same motives as those which inspire the movement. [ Lamartine ]

That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out. [ Addison ]

There is dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens its cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself and the drop runs off. So God rains goodness and mercy as wide as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we do not open our hearts to receive them. [ Aughey ]

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. [ Mark Twain, The Babies ]

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness only stimulates the climber to steadier and steadier steps, till that legend of the rough places fulfills itself at last, per aspera ad astra, over steep ways to the stars. [ Bishop W. C. Doane ]

Just as a tested and rugged virtue of the moral hero is worth more than the lovely, tender, untried innocence of the child, so is the massive strength of a soul that has conquered truth for itself worth more than the soft peach-bloom faith of a soul that takes truth on trust. [ F. E. Abbot ]

The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium. [ G. S. Hillard ]

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness only stimulates the climber to steadier and steadier steps, till that legend of the rough places fulfills itself at last, "per aspera ad astra", over steep ways to the stars. [ Bishop W. C. Doane ]

Chance is a term we apply to events to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. When we say a thing happens by chance, we mean no more than that its cause is unknown to us, and not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of anything. [ C. Buck ]

From the year 1789 to the year 1860 no nation has ever known a more unbounded prosperity, a fuller space of happiness. In the short space of seventy years, within the turn of a single life, the nation, poor, weak and despised, raised itself to the pinnacle of power and of glory. [ Robert C. Winthrop ]

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 ]

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature. [ Pascal ]

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble. The proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none. By itself, the voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric. Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail, nor reason. [ Enchiridion ]

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 ]

Pain itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent, but it is seldom both violent and long-continued; and its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. [ Paley ]

The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him. [ Seneca ]

It is necessary to look forward as well as backward, as some think it is always necessary to regulate their conduct by things that have been done of old times, but that past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on an alternative of some past that went before it. [ Madame De Stael ]

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind. [ Bruyere ]

What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper. [ Seneca ]

Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. [ John Locke ]

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. [ Hazlitt ]

In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]

Method, we are aware, is an essential ingredient in every discourse designed for the instruction of mankind; but it ought never to force itself on the attention as an object - never appear to be an end instead of an instrument; or beget a suspicion of the sentiments being introduced for the sake of the method, not the method for the sentiments. [ Robert Hall ]

Honor is not a virtue in itself, it is the mail behind which the virtues fight more securely. A man without honor is as maimed in his equipment as an accoutred knight without helmet. Honor is not simply truthfulness; it is truthfulness sparkling with the fire of a suspective personality. It is something more than an ornament even to the loftiest. [ George H. Calvert ]

The study of the mathematics cultivates the reason; that of the languages at the same time the reason and the taste. The former gives power to the mind; the latter, both power and flexibility. The former, by itself, would prepare us for a state of certainties, which nowhere exists; the latter, for a state of probabilities, which is that of common life. [ T. Godfrey ]

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applause of the public. [ Addison ]

Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go. to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch. [ Pascal ]

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 ]

Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. [ Hillard ]

When the first time of love is over, there comes a something better still; then comes that other love; that faithful friendship which never changes, and which will accompany you with its calm light through the whole of life; it is only needful to place yourself so that it may come, and then it comes of itself; and then everything turns and changes itself for the best. [ Frederika Bremer ]

A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every other part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more than that the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself. [ Joseph Addison ]

Poetry deserves the honor it obtains as the eldest offspring of literature, and the fairest. It is the fruitfulness of many plants growing into one flower and sowing itself over the world in shapes of beauty and color, which differ with the soil that receives and the sun that ripens the seed. In Persia, it comes up the rose of Hafiz; in England, the many-blossomed tree of Shakespeare. [ Willmott ]

The light of the sun, the light of the moon, and the light of the air, in nature and substance are one and the same light, and yet they are there distinct lights: the light of the sun being of itself, and from none; the light of the moon from the sun; and the light of the air from them both. So the Divine Nature is one, and the persons three; subsisting, after a diverse manner, in one and the same Nature. [ R. Newton ]

There are chords in the human heart - strange varying strings - which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view. [ Dickens ]

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 ]

A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar. [ William Winter ]

True hope is based on energy of character. A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope, because it knows the mutability of human affairs and how slight a circumstance may change the whole course of events. Such a spirit, too, rests upon itself, it is not confined to partial views, or to one particular object. And if at last all should be lost, it has saved itself, its own integrity and worth. Hope awakens courage, while despondency is the last of all evils, it is the abandonment of good, the giving up of the battle of life with dead nothingness. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician. [ Von Knebel (German), Translated by Mrs. Austin ]

All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]

Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge: it is immortal as the heart of men. If the labors of the men of science should ever create any revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will then sleep no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on. as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. [ Wordsworth ]