Between ourselves.

Friends are ourselves. [ John Donne ]

When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade. [ Whittier ]

Remorse turns us against ourselves. [ Chamfort ]

No one can disgrace us but ourselves. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]

The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart,
The secret anniversaries of the heart. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Nothing is a misery,
Unless our weakness apprehend it so:
We cannot be more faithful to ourselves,
In anything that's manly, than to make
Ill-fortune as contemptible to us
As it makes us to others. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves. [ Jul. Caes ]

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 ]

Nothing but ourselves can finally beat us. [ Carlyle ]

We live not to ourselves, our work is life. [ Bailey ]

We are never deceived we deceive ourselves. [ Goethe ]

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things. [ Robert Browning ]

Still to ourselves in every place consigned
Our own felicity we make or find. [ Goldsmith ]

We'll bark ourselves if we buy dogs so dear. [ Proverb ]

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass the tropics, and behold each pole;
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own soul. [ Davies ]

Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill;
We may be independent if we will. [ Churchill ]

Accusing the times is but excusing ourselves. [ Proverb ]

Sometimes we are devils to ourselves.
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers.
Presuming on their changeful potency. [ William Shakespeare ]

Not in the clamor of the crowded street.
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves are triumph and defeat. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

At the sight of a man we too say to ourselves,
Let us be men. [ Amiel ]

But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
Of every wind that blows. [ William Shakespeare ]

We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. [ William Shakespeare ]

Friends, those relations that we make ourselves.

What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves.
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. [ Armstrong ]

We talk little if we do not talk about ourselves. [ Hazlitt ]

Years following years, steal something every day;
At last they steal us from ourselves away. [ Pope ]

We will bark ourselves ere we'll buy dogs so dear. [ Proverb ]

Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves. [ Rousseau ]

If we be enemies to ourselves whither shall we fly? [ Proverb ]

If we did not flatter ourselves, nobody else could. [ Proverb ]

The faults of our neighbours with freedom we blame,
But tax not ourselves, though we practise the same. [ Cunningham ]

Still all great souls still make their own content;
We to ourselves may all our wishes grant;
For, nothing coveting, we nothing want. [ Dryden ]

Secrecy is best taught by commencing with ourselves. [ Chamfort ]

Lynx-eyed toward our equals, and moles to ourselves. [ La Fontaine ]

Our country ought to be dearer to us than ourselves. [ Cicero ]

Generally we love ourselves more than we hate others. [ Proverb ]

To envy anybody is to confess ourselves his inferior. [ Mlle. de Lespinasse ]

Solitude makes us love ourselves, conversation others. [ Proverb ]

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us. [ A. B. Alcott ]

When we are pleased ourselves we begin to please others. [ Proverb ]

It is almost as necessary to know other men as ourselves. [ Proverb ]

Reputation depends less upon ourselves than upon fortune. [ Proverb ]

Should we condemn ourselves to ignorance to preserve hope? [ E. Souvestre ]

We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves. [ Desmahis ]

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. [ George Eliot ]

We are never so happy, or unfortunate, as we think ourselves. [ Proverb ]

Who shall be true to us when we are so unsecret to ourselves? [ William Shakespeare ]

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves. [ Pope ]

The more we deny ourselves, the more the gods supply our wants. [ Horace ]

We easily forget those faults which are known only to ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Little wrongs done to others are great wrongs done to ourselves. [ Proverb ]

Death is the waitingroom where we robe ourselves for immortality. [ Rev. C. H. Spurgeon ]

It is foolish to distress ourselves about what cannot be avoided. [ Syr ]

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Let us teach ourselves that honorable step, not to outdo discretion. [ William Shakespeare ]

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

If nobody take notice of our faults, we easily forget them ourselves. [ Proverb ]

We are never so happy, nor so unhappy, as we suppose ourselves to be. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

To men we can give no help, and they hinder us from helping ourselves. [ Jarno, in Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister." ]

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. [ Colton ]

Before God can deliver us from ourselves, we must undeceive ourselves. [ St. Augustine ]

It is chance that gives us relations, but we give friends to ourselves. [ Delille ]

Everybody in this world wants watching, but nobody more than ourselves. [ H. W. Shaw ]

We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced. [ Rousseau ]

When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves that we are leaving them. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

We mingle in society not so much to meet others as to escape ourselves. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

To love is to ask of another the happiness that is lacking in ourselves. [ Rochepedre ]

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

We know God easily, provided we do not constrain ourselves to define Him. [ Joubert ]

We often shed tears which deceive ourselves after having deceived others. [ Rochefoucauld ]

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure is to correct ourselves. [ Demosthenes ]

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. [ S. Smiles ]

Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other. [ George MacDonald ]

Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others. [ Colton ]

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not to talk of ourselves at all. [ Rochefoucauld ]

We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artifices as we do ourselves. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

If we would not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could not harm us. [ Rochefoucauld ]

How wisely fate ordained for human kind Calamity! which is the perfect glass.
Wherein we truly see and know ourselves. [ Davenant ]

Only in the loves we have for others than ourselves, can we truly live or die. [ Phillips Brooks ]

Since we cannot attain to greatness, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it. [ Montaigne ]

God gives strength to bear a great deal, if we only strive ourselves to endure. [ Hans Andersen ]

It is with the mind that we amuse ourselves, but with the heart we never weary. [ A. Dumas pere ]

By forgetting ourselves in thinking of the feelings of others we gain happiness. [ Henry D. Chapin ]

We cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

To be truly and really independent is to support ourselves by our own exertions. [ Porter ]

Better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than fail in assisting the unfortunate. [ Du Cceur ]

When we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. [ Proverb ]

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves. [ Hazlitt ]

In love we are not only liable to betray ourselves, but also the secrets of others. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others. [ Madame Swetchine ]

Without content, we shall find it almost as difficult to please others as ourselves. [ Greville ]

Great thoughts and a pure heart are the things we should beg for ourselves from God. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Happiness is neither within us nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with God. [ Pascal ]

Much of our ignorance is of ourselves. Our eyes are full of dust. Prejudice blinds us. [ Abraham Coles ]

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our duty and find in it our pleasure. [ Mme. de Motteville ]

How can we expect another to keep our secret, when it is more than we can do ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Every man stamps his value on himself; the price we challenge for ourselves is given us. [ Johann C. F. Von Schiller ]

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

When we think that we are experimenting on others, we are really experimenting on ourselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

We're not ourselves when Nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body. [ William Shakespeare ]

We never know a great character until something congenial to it has grown up within ourselves. [ William Ellery Channing ]

Why are we so blind? That which we improve, we have, that which we hoard is not for ourselves. [ Madame Deluzy ]

We must not suppose ourselves always to have conquered a temptation when we have fled from it. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

What we wish we readily believe, and what we think ourselves we imagine that others think also. [ Caesar ]

We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure that we find in appearing so. [ De Barthelemy ]

Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own. [ Ovid ]

Worthy books are not companions, they are solitudes; we lose ourselves in them, and all our cares. [ S. Bailey ]

We are often governed by people not only weaker than ourselves, but even by those whom we think so. [ Lord Greville ]

Necessity, like electricity, is in ourselves and all things, and no more without us than within us. [ S. Bailey ]

Every form of freedom is hurtful, except that which delivers us over to perfect command of ourselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Trouble is a thing that will come without our call; but true joy will not spring up without ourselves. [ Bp. Patrick ]

We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavouring to think so ourselves. [ Confucius ]

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

The nearest we can come to perfect happiness is to cheat ourselves with the belief that we have got it. [ H. W. Shaw ]

We wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them. [ William Shakespeare ]

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. [ Johnson ]

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Hate belongs with sin. If we do a wrong, we hate either the thing or God, or ourselves, or somebody else. [ Duffield ]

Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades. [ Mme. Du Deffand ]

We can prostrate ourselves in the dust when we have committed a fault, but it is not best to remain there. [ Chateaubriand ]

We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

It many times falls out that we deem ourselves much deceived by others because we first deceive ourselves.

To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; and to have a deference for others governs our manners. [ Sterne ]

For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves. [ Bacon ]

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship. [ Thoreau ]

Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Our moral impressions invariably prove strongest in those moments when we are most driven back upon ourselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Imparting knowledge, is only lighting other men's candle at our lamp, without depriving ourselves of any flame. [ Jane Porter ]

Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure and generally occasion ourselves. [ Beaconsfield ]

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are the perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others. [ Immanuel Kant ]

What are the aims which are at the same time duties in life? The perfecting of ourselves and the happiness of others. [ Jean Paul ]

Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconscious to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side. [ E. H. Chapin ]

Real glory springs from the quiet conquest of ourselves; and without that the conqueror is nought but the first slave. [ Thomson ]

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream - it may be so the moment after death. [ Hawthorne ]

We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves. Fear, desire, and hope are still pushing us on towards the future. [ Montaigne ]

The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is a civil war, and in all such contentions, triumphs are defeats. [ Colton ]

Great names stand not alone for great deeds; they stand also for great virtues, and, doing them worship, we elevate ourselves. [ H. Giles ]

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the test of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves. [ Bishop Whately ]

There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them, - by laying them out in charity. [ Tillotson ]

We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid of ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Pleasure and pain, the good, and the bad, are so intermixed that we can not shun the one without depriving ourselves of the other. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to what our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. [ Gibbon ]

We are ordinarily more easily satisfied with reasons that we have discovered ourselves, than by those which have occurred to others. [ Pascal ]

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us in solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. [ J. Collier ]

Dead is she? No; rather let us call ourselves dead, who tire so soon in the service of the Master whom she has gone to serve forever. [ W. S. Smart ]

Be this the first law established in friendship, that we neither ask of others what is dishonourable, nor ourselves do it when asked. [ Cicero ]

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that we can't stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces of folly that can be. [ Sir Matthew Hale ]

It is the vain endeavour to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough. [ Lowell ]

We should learn, by reflecting on the misfortunes which have attended others, that there is nothing singular in those which befall ourselves. [ Melmoth ]

The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbors. [ Clarendon ]

Let us then be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. [ Longfellow ]

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. [ George Eliot ]

We must strive to make ourselves really worthy of some employment. We need pay no attention to anything else; the rest is the business of others. [ Bruyere ]

How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Essay to do thy duty, and thou knowest at once what is in thee. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Life would be easy enough if we were not continually exerting ourselves to forge new chains, and invent absurd formalities which make it a burden.

Not to be provoked is best; but if moved, never correct till the fume is spent; for every stroke our fury strikes is sure to bit ourselves at last. [ William Penn ]

This span of life was lent for lofty duties, not for selfishness; not to be wiled away for aimless dreams, but to improve ourselves, and serve mankind. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. [ Lamb ]

Some things will not bear much zeal; and the more earnest we are about them, the less we recommend ourselves to the approbation of sober and considerate men. [ Tillotson ]

To protect ourselves against the storms of passion, marriage with a good woman is a harbor in the tempest; but with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves. [ Bruyere ]

When we plant a tree, we are doing what we can to make our planet a more wholesome and happier dwelling-place for those who come after us if not for ourselves. [ Holmes ]

We may hold it slavish to dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs; but are we not ourselves both when we are singular in our attire? [ Chatfield ]

The attempt to make one false impression on the mind of a friend respecting ourselves is of the nature of perfidy. Sincerity should be observed most scrupulously. [ William Ellery Channing ]

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. [ Plato ]

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants. [ Johnson ]

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so. [ Pope ]

Force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the center of that. There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has force in it; how else could it rot? [ Carlyle ]

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 ]

By reasoning we satisfy ourselves: by rhetoric we satisfy others. Most modern orators and rhetoricians content themselves with fulfilling the first part of this proposition. [ P. B. Randolph ]

There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is plain as noon to all other eyes. [ Rev. Dr. Croly ]

Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment. [ H. T. Tuckerman ]

There is graciousness and a kind of urbanity in beginning with men by esteem and confidence. It proves, at least, that we have long lived in good company with others and with ourselves. [ Joubert ]

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. [ Alexander Smith ]

Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves. [ A. B. Alcott ]

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves. [ J. G. Holland ]

Truth contradicts our nature, error does not, and for a very simple reason: truth requires us to regard ourselves as limited, error flatters us to think of ourselves as in one or other way unlimited. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone. [ Emerson ]

We should never so entirely avoid danger as to appear irresolute and cowardly; but, at the same time, we should avoid unnecessarily exposing ourselves to danger, than which nothing can be more foolish. [ Cicero ]

To give pleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing the ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the diversions last. There is no worse killjoy than the ego. [ Charles Wagner ]

The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us; and it is hardly possible for one man to be more unlike another than he that forbears to avenge himself of wrong is to him who did the wrong. [ Jane Porter ]

So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us. [ Plutarch ]

It has been shrewdly said, that when men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do. [ Colton ]

No man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they disagree with that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. [ Colton ]

Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us. There does not live on earth the man, be his station what it may, that I despise myself compared with him. Man is made great or little by his own will. [ Schiller ]

We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

Nothing on earth is without difficulty. Only the inner impulse, the pleasure it gives and love enable us to surmount obstacles; to make smooth our way, and lift ourselves out of the narrow grooves in which other people sorrowfully distress themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Welfare requires one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with, - persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day, by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults. [ Agapet ]

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 ]

Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death. [ Mackenzie ]

Peacefully and reasonably to contemplate is at no time hurtful, and while we use ourselves to think of the advantages of others, our own mind comes insensibly to imitate them; and every false activity to which our fancy was alluring us is then willingly abandoned. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case. [ Colton ]

Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves. [ Rochefoucauld ]

There are certain times in our life when we find ourselves in circumstances, that not only press upon us, but seem to weigh us down altogether. They give us, however, not only the opportunity, but they impose on us the duty of elevating ourselves, and thereby fulfilling the purpose of the Divine Being in our creation. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Manhood begins when we have, in a way, made truce with necessity; begins, at all events, when we have surrendered to necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to necessity, and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in necessity we are free. [ Carlyle ]

Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the best flower of civilisation, and the best result which life has to offer us--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know is brought into play, and as the reproduction, in finer form, of all our havings. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

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 ]

What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendor and fruitions of the beatific vision. [ Robert Hall ]

Was man made to disdain the gifts of nature? Was he placed on earth but to gather bitter fruits? For whom are the flowers the gods cause to bloom at the feet of mortals? It pleases Providence when we abandon ourselves to the different inclinations that He has given us: our duties come from His laws, and our desires from His inspirations.

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 ]

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. [ Swift ]

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change - that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out. [ Robert Louis Stevenson ]

The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it, whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel at evening that the day was well worth its fatigues. [ Lucy Larcom ]

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]

Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace. [ Tuckerman ]

Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a wicked and slothful servant. For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done. [ Maltbie Babcock ]

Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]