Art is power. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Knowledge is power. [ Bacon ]
The balance of power. [ Sir Robert Walpole ]
Beauty, in woman, is power. [ Rotrou ]
Excess of power intoxicates. [ Mme. de Remusat ]
Power rests in tranquillity. [ Cecil ]
I gaze upon the thousand stars
That fill the midnight sky;
And wish, so passionately wish,
A light like theirs on high.
I have such eagerness of hope
To benefit my kind;
I feel as if immortal power
Were given to my mind. [ Miss Landon ]
Kings have no power over souls. [ Proverb ]
Sincerity gives wings to power.
Power seldom grows old at Court. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Peace the offspring is of power. [ Bayard Taylor ]
To have the power to forgive,
Is empire and prerogative,
And 'tis in crowns a nobler gem,
To grant a pardon than condemn. [ Butler ]
I may not to the world impart
The secret of its power,
But treasured in my inmost heart
I keep my faded flower. [ Ellen C Howarth ]
I feel a host in this single arm. [ Schiller ]
Habit is necessary to give power. [ Hazlitt ]
Sensibility is the power of woman. [ Lavater ]
The power of habit is very strong. [ Syrus ]
Man's rank is his power to uplift. [ George Macdonald ]
Patience and gentleness are power. [ Leigh Hunt ]
All human power is but comparative. [ Proverb ]
A little instrument of mighty power. [ Cervantes ]
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. [ Whittier ]
An equal has no power over an equal. [ Law Maxim ]
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats, the unseen, amongst us. [ Shelley ]
Death from sin no power can separate. [ Milton ]
Wherever there is power there is age. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
'Tis said that absence conquers love;
But oh! believe it not.
I've tried, alas! its power to prove,
But thou art not forgot. [ Frederick W. Thomas ]
To do nothing is in every man's power. [ Johnson ]
Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. [ Charles Reade ]
By time and counsel do the best we can:
The event is never in the power of man. [ Herrick ]
Time's waters will not ebb nor stay;
Power cannot change them, but Love may;
What cannot be, Love counts it done. [ Keble ]
Press onward through each varying hour;
Let no weak fears thy course delay;
Immortal being! feel thy power,
Pursue thy bright and endless way. [ Andrews Norton ]
That dire disease, whose ruthless power
Withers the beauty - transient flower. [ Goldsmith ]
They that govern most make least noise. [ John Selden ]
Keep your working power at its maximum. [ W. R. Alger ]
Nor love, nor honor, wealth, nor power,
Can give the heart a cheerful hour
When health is lost. Be timely wise;
With health all taste of pleasure flies. [ Gay ]
We know that wealth well understood,
Hath frequent power of doing good;
Then fancy that the thing is done,
As if the power and will were one;
Thus oft the cheated crowd adore,
The thriving knaves that keep them poor. [ Gay ]
With eyes
Of microscopic power, that could discern
The population of a dew-drop. [ James Montgomery ]
We frequently misplace esteem,
By judging men by what they seem,
To birth, wealth, power, we should allow
Precedence, and our lowest bow. [ Gay ]
Ambition has but one reward tor all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name! [ William Winter ]
Earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. [ William Shakespeare ]
The heart has always the pardoning power. [ Mme. Swetchine ]
Had I power, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell.
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth. [ William Shakespeare ]
The highest power may be lost by misrule. [ Syrus ]
Friendship has a power
To soothe affliction in her darkest hour. [ H. K. White ]
To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No - all that's worth a wish - a thought.
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind. [ Dr. Johnson ]
I know
The past and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]
Simplicity is beauty; simplicity is power. [ Halleck ]
Pretension is nothing; power is everything. [ Whipple ]
Power, safely defied, touches its downfall. [ Macaulay ]
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 ]
He hath no power who hath not power to use. [ Bailey ]
Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway,
The passion and infirmity of age. [ Frowde ]
'Tis godlike to have power, but not to kill. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
I work with patience, which is almost power. [ Mrs. Browning ]
Divine Philosophy, by whose pure light
We first distinguish, then pursue the right;
Thy power the breast from every error frees,
And weeds out all its vices by degrees. [ Juv ]
If knowledge is power, patience is powerful. [ Robert Hall ]
No lock will hold against the power of gold. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends, who can alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take. [ Mrs. Norton ]
What can power give more than food and drink,
To live at ease and not be bound to think? [ Dryden ]
The eye sees what it brings the power to see. [ Carlyle ]
Not where death hath power may love be blest. [ Mrs. Ilemans ]
Few persons comprehend the power of ugliness. [ Mirabeau ]
No emperor has power to dictate to the heart. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
It is godlike to have power, but not to kill. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. [ Bible ]
Sweet letters of the angel tongue,
I've loved ye long and well.
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet
To find some secret spell -
A charm that has bound me with witching power,
For mine is the old belief,
That midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf! [ M. M. Ballou ]
Order and system are nobler things than power. [ Ruskin ]
He has the power whom the majority believe in. [ Raupach ]
And genius hath electric power,
Which earth can never tame;
Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower -
Its flash is still the same. [ Lydia M. Child ]
Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame.
The power of grace, the magic of a name. [ Campbell ]
Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image of the mind!
Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing.
Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring;
But Man alone has skill and power to send
The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend;
'Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise
Ages remote, and nations yet to rise. [ Crabbe ]
Power is ever stealing from the many to the few. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Power above powers!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! [ Daniel ]
Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine.
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, 'Tis for mine
For me kind nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower. [ Pope ]
Live thou! and of the grain and husk, the grape,
And ivy berry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
Most powerful is he who has himself in his power. [ Seneca ]
Our knowledge is our power, and God our strength. [ Southey ]
Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Too curious man! why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown, are woe!
The all-seeing power, that made thee mortal, gave
Thee every thing a mortal state should have. [ Dryden ]
Life, unexplored, is hope's perpetual blaze
When past, one long, involved, and darksome maze:
But, that some mighty power controls the whole,
A secret intuition tells the soul. [ William Winter ]
There is a charm, a power, that sways the breast,
Bids every passion revel or be still,
Inspires with anger, or all your cares dissolves;
Can soothe distraction and most despair,
That power is music. [ Armstrong ]
Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest.
Know, all enjoy that power which suits them best. [ Pope ]
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. [ Emerson ]
Things all are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein ...
Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour. [ George Herbert ]
Madam, I am, to the utmost of my power, not yours. [ Proverb ]
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou god of our idolatry, the Press?
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws,
Exert their influence, and advance their cause:
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befell.
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell;
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
Thou ever bubbling spring of endless lies,
Like Eden's dread probationary tree.
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee! [ Cowper ]
His life is paralleled
Even with the stroke and line of his great justice;
He doth with holy abstinence subdue
That in himself which he spurs on his power
To qualify in others. [ William Shakespeare ]
I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Nor actions, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on. [ William Shakespeare ]
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. [ John Dryden ]
Whenever he speaks, Heaven, how the listening throng
Dwell on the melting music of his tongue!
His arguments are emblems of his mien,
Mild but not faint, and forcing, though serene:
And when the power of eloquence he'd try,
Here lightning strikes you, there soft breezes sigh. [ Garth ]
I know My God commands, whose power no power resists. [ Robert Greene ]
Knowledge, love, power, - there is the complete life. [ Amiel ]
The truly great man
Is as apt to forgive as his power is able to revenge. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power. [ Goethe ]
The less power a man has, the more he likes to use it. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Passion joined with power., produces thunder and ruin. [ Proverb ]
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfil another. [ Mrs. Marian Lewes Cross (pen name George Eliot) ]
A man's tyranny is measured only by his power to abuse. [ Donn Piatt ]
Think with terror on the slow, the quiet power of time. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Majority is applied to number, and superiority to power. [ Johnson ]
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall. [ Bacon ]
Power, carried to extremes, is always liable to reaction. [ Rufus Choate ]
The power of necessity is greater than that of affection. [ Seneca ]
Misfortunes have their dignity and their redeeming power. [ George S. Hillard ]
Divination seems heightened to its highest power in woman. [ A. B. Alcott ]
Power acquired by guilt was never used for a good purpose. [ Tacitus ]
Great genial power consists in being altogether receptive. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Time past, even God is deprived of the power of recalling. [ Aristotle ]
Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
It is better to suffer than to lose the power of suffering. [ Walter Savage Landor ]
Liberty consists in the power of doing what the law permits. [ Law ]
God's power never produces what His goodness cannot embrace. [ South ]
Apt words have power to 'suage The tumors of a troubled mind;
And are as balm to festered wounds. [ Milton ]
Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. [ Bible ]
Power's footstool is opinion, and his throne the human heart. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]
Journalism has already come to be the first power in the land. [ Samuel Bowles ]
All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion. [ Hume ]
All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff. [ Novalis ]
Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power. [ Horace Mann ]
Those in supreme power always suspect and hate their next heir. [ Tac ]
Nothing is more haughty than a common-place man raised to power. [ French Proverb ]
Power is seldom innocent, and envy is the yokefellow of eminence. [ Tupper ]
Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power. [ Wm. Ellery Channing ]
I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. [ Burke ]
In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Cant is properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie. [ Carlyle ]
Even in war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four. [ Napoleon I ]
To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes. [ Burke ]
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities. [ Madame de Stael ]
The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism. [ J. Stuart Mill ]
Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty. [ Maclaren ]
We are not strong by our power to penetrate, but by our relatedness. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Scholarship, save by accident, is never the measure of a man's power. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
What must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust! [ James Otis ]
Ridicule is often employed with more power and success than severity. [ Horace ]
You who follow wealth and power with unremitting ardour,
The more in this you look for bliss, you leave your view the farther. [ Burns ]
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power of dominion. [ Addison ]
Where would the power of women be, were it not for the vanity of men? [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman. [ Amos Bronson Alcott ]
Every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity. [ William Shakespeare ]
Power is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight. [ Lew Wallace ]
To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power. [ George MacDonald ]
Lively feeling of situations, and power to express them, make the poet. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
In these days, whether we like it or not, the power is with the tongue. [ Lord Salisbury ]
He that hinders not a mischief when it is in his power, is guilty of it. [ Proverb ]
In seasons of tumult and discord, the worst men have the greatest power. [ Tac ]
It is the nature of intellect to strive to improve in intellectual power. [ Hosea Ballou ]
No power of good can be obtained by doing nothing and by knowing nothing. [ Johnson ]
The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. [ Schiller ]
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power. [ Hazlitt ]
The duration of passion is no more in our power than the duration of life. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Taste consists in the power of judging; genius, in the power of executing. [ Blair ]
Next to the assumption of power was the responsibility of relinquishing it. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
The surest test of a man's critical power is his judgment of contemporaries. [ La Bruyère ]
The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble. [ Kossuth ]
Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions. [ Chatfield ]
Ambition persevers in the desire of acquiring power, genius flags of itself. [ Madame De Stael ]
Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne. [ Landor ]
Power is the queen of the world, not opinion; but opinion makes use of power. [ Pascal ]
Tyranny is irresponsible power ... whether the power be lodged in one or many. [ Canning ]
Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself. [ Burke ]
Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power. [ Coleridge ]
As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action. [ Wycherley ]
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power. [ Tillotson ]
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. [ Lowell ]
He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the rest no longer in his power. [ Richter ]
O you much partial gods! why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them? [ Ludovic Barry ]
It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. [ Demosthenes ]
Circumstances are beyond the control of a man, but his conduct is in his own power. [ Earl Of Beaconsfield ]
The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power. [ Emerson ]
The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character. [ J. G. Holland ]
If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power? [ Higgons ]
Gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite the man that mocks at it, and sets it light. [ William Shakespeare ]
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power. [ Emerson ]
Every power of both heaven and earth is friendly to a noble and courageous activity. [ J. Burroughs ]
Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic. [ Noah Webster ]
Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted. [ William Pinkney ]
Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood. [ Coleridge ]
A man's enemies have no power to harm him, if he is true to himself and loyal to God. [ John B. Gough ]
A fair woman shall not only command without authority, but persuade without speaking. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Every genius has most power in his own language, and every heart in its own religion. [ Jean Paul ]
The height of power in women, so far as manners are concerned, rests in tranquillity. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty. [ Burke ]
Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave. [ Lowell ]
Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take that subtle power, the never-halting time. [ Wordsworth ]
If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. [ James A. Garfield ]
It is modesty that places in the feeble hand of beauty the sceptre that commands power. [ Helvetius ]
From the power which constrains every creature man frees himself by overcoming himself. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
In the power of fixing the attention, lies the most precious of the intellectual habits. [ Bishop Hall ]
Great is the power, great the authority, of a senate which is unanimous in its opinions. [ Cicero ]
The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak. [ Hare ]
If mercy were not mingled with His power, this wretched world could not subsist one hour. [ Sir W. Davenant ]
To enlarge or illustrate this power of the effects of love is to set a candle in the sun. [ Robert Burton ]
Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven. [ Mme. Necker ]
Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty. [ Lowell ]
Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity. [ Emerson ]
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. [ Emerson ]
We love and live in power; it is the spirit's end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life. [ Bailey ]
Inflict not on an enemy every injury in your power, for he may afterwards become your friend. [ Saadi ]
Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power. [ Amiel ]
When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. [ Shelley ]
Journalism is an immense power, that threatens soon to supersede sermons, lectures, and books. [ Theodore Tilton ]
There is a power a hundred times more powerful than that of bayonets: it is the power of ideas. [ Chevalier ]
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power. [ Mme. de Stael ]
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune. [ Wm. Penn ]
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy in religion - a form of knowledge without the power of it. [ Addison ]
It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out. [ Herder ]
Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place. [ Johnson ]
Whatever disgrace we have merited, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our reputation. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and, far from commanding it, we are forced to obey it. [ Rousseau ]
Great is the power of habit: teaching us as it does to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain. [ Cicero ]
Power is detested, and miserable is the life of him who wishes rather to be feared than to be loved. [ Nepos ]
Men of limited intelligence generally condemn everything that is above their power of understanding. [ La Roche ]
It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power. [ Pascal ]
The Golden Rule Of Three.
Three things to be - pure, just and honest.
Three things to govern - temper, tongue and conduct.
Three things to live - courage, affection and gentleness.
Three things to love - the wise, the virtuous and the innocent.
Three things to commend - thrift, industry and promptness.
Three things about which to think - life, death and eternity.
Three things to despise - cruelty, arrogance and ingratitude.
Three things to admire - dignity, gracefulness and intellectual power.
Three things to cherish - the true, the beautiful and the good.
Three things for which to wish - health, friends and contentment.
Three things for which to fight - honor, home and country.
Three things to attain - goodness of heart, integrity of purpose and cheerfulness of disposition.
Three things to give - alms to the needy, comfort to the sad and appreciation to the worthy.
Three things to desire - the blessing of God, an approving conscience and the fellowship of the good.
Three things for which to work - a trained mind, a skilled hand and a regulated heart.
Three things for which to hope - a haven of peace, a robe of righteousness and the crown of life. [ Beattie ]
Hateful is the power and pitiable is the life of those who wish to be feared rather than to be loved. [ Nepos ]
Beauty deceives women in making them establish on an ephemeral power the pretensions of a whole life. [ Bignicourt ]
Lovely sweetness is the noblest power of woman, and is far fitter to prevail by parley than by battle. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Friendship is too pure a pleasure for a mind cankered with ambition or the lust of power and grandeur. [ Junius ]
Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to reestablish our character. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. [ Lessing ]
Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. [ Daniel Webster ]
That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power. [ Landor ]
God has been pleased to prescribe limits to His own power, and to work out His ends within these limits. [ Paley ]
No pay is receivable by any true man; but power is receivable by him in the love and faith you give him. [ John Ruskin ]
It is the treating of the common-place with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. [ J. F. Millet ]
The saddest failures in life are those that come from the not putting forth of power and will to succeed. [ Whipple ]
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation. [ Johnson ]
The lust of dominion burns with a flame so fierce as to overpower all other affections of the human breast. [ Tacitus ]
Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty, the power of appreciating beauty. [ Margaret Fuller Ossoli ]
We must endure our doom as easily as may be, knowing as we do, that the power of necessity is irresistible. [ Aeschylus ]
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. [ Emerson ]
Like other tyrants, death delights to smite what, smitten, most proclaims the pride of power and arbitrary nod. [ Young ]
The sun's power cannot draw a wandering star from its path. How then could a human being fall out of God's love! [ Rückert ]
There is no friendship between those associated in power; he who rules will always be impatient of an associate. [ Lucan ]
Men believe that their reason governs their words; but it often happens the words have power to react on reason. [ Bacon ]
The happiness of married life depends upon the power of making small sacrifices with readiness and cheerfulness. [ Selden ]
Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is often simple patience. [ Horace Bushnell ]
There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin. [ J. G. Holland ]
Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely. [ Bulwer ]
No human power can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades; it only makes hypocrites. [ Fenelon ]
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold. [ Shelley ]
Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great. [ Bulwer ]
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs. [ Emerson ]
There comes a period of the imagination to each - a later youth - the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry. [ Emerson ]
A beautiful object doth so much attract the sight of all men, that it is in no man's power not to be pleased with it. [ Clarendon ]
Well does Agathon say: Of this alone is even God deprived - the power of making that which is past never to have been.
[ Aristotle ]
His nature is too noble for the world; he would not flatter Neptune for his trident, or Jove for his power to thunder. [ William Shakespeare ]
Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice. [ Mazzini ]
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their successes to prudence and merit. [ Swift ]
Our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm, as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence. [ George Eliot ]
To no man, whatever his station in life, or his power to serve me, have I ever paid a compliment at the expense of truth. [ Burns ]
Inexorable necessity has power over man; it has no dread of the immortals, who have houses in Olympus away from sad grief. [ Stoboeus ]
Lessons of wisdom have never such power over us as when they are wrought into the heart through the groundwork of a story. [ Sterne ]
Vigor is contagious; and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action. [ Emerson ]
Beauty attracts us men, but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed with gold or silver beside, it attracts with tenfold power. [ Richter ]
Love requires not so much proofs, as expressions, of love. Love demands little else than the power to feel and to requite love. [ Richter ]
The freedom of a government does not depend upon the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them. [ Thaddeus Stevens ]
There are few men so obstinate in their atheism whom a pressing danger will not reduce to an acknowledgment of the Divine power. [ Plato ]
Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth. [ Dante ]
In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power and his dark path becomes a way of light to heaven. [ Dickens ]
Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own. [ John Dryden ]
Contrast increases the splendour of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. [ John Ruskin ]
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 ]
To be able to be silent testifies of power, to will to be silent of indulgence, to be obliged to be silent of the spirit of the time. [ C. J. Weber ]
Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession. [ Henry Home ]
Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals, if in power or splendor less, in freedom equal? [ Milton ]
Failures always overtake those who have the power to do, without the will to act, and who need that essential quality in life, energy. [ James Ellis ]
There are two ways of attaining an important end - force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time. [ Mme. Swetchine ]
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind; a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things. [ Whately ]
Every man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
Remorseless time! fierce spirit of the glass and scythe. What power can stay him in his silent course, or melt his iron heart with pity! [ George D. Prentice ]
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate. [ Montaigne ]
No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech. [ James A. Garfield ]
Power of imagination is regulated only by art, especially by poetry. There is nothing more frightful than imaginative faculty without taste. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Many in hot pursuit have hasted to the goal of wealth, but have lost, as they ran, those apples of gold, the mind and the power to enjoy it. [ Tupper ]
Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, raised to the second power, woman is at once the delight and the terror of man. [ Amiel ]
The intellect of woman bears the same relationship to that of man as her physical organization; it is inferior in power and different in kind. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life, [ Marcus Aurelius ]
Two gifts are indispensable to the dramatic poet; one is the power of forgetting himself, the other is the power of remembering his characters. [ Stoddart ]
Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power, that is all. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Style in painting is the same as in writing, - a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire. [ E. de Girardin ]
We are at best but stewards of what we falsely call our own; yet avarice is so insatiable that it is not in the power of liberality to content it. [ Seneca ]
Fate follows and limits power; power attends and antagonises fate; we must respect fate as natural history, but there is more than natural history. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The eyes of a man are of no use without the observing power. Telescopes and microscopes are cunning contrivances, but they cannot see of themselves. [ Paxton Hood ]
To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God. [ Colton ]
Imagination is always the ruling and divine power, and the rest of the man is only the instrument which it sounds, or the tablet on which it writes. [ John Ruskin ]
The magic power of love consists in its ennobling whatever its breath touches, like the sun whose golden ray transmutes even thunderclouds into gold. [ Grillparzer ]
Kind words are benedictions. They are not only instruments of power, but of benevolence and courtesy; blessings both to the speaker and hearer of them. [ Frederick Saunders ]
A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury: for he has it then in his power to make himself his superior to the other by forgiveness. [ Drummond ]
Cullen whispered in his last moments: I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die.
[ Dr. Derby ]
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls. [ Massillon ]
Music is a source of surpassing delight to many minds. From its power to soothe the feelings and modify the passions, it seems desirable to understand it. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
O, if we could tear aside the veil, and see but for one hour what it signifies to be a soul in the power of an endless life, what a revelation would it be! [ Horace Bushnell ]
God takes men's hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will. [ Richard Baxter ]
One man pursues power in order to possess wealth, and another pursues wealth in order to possess power; which last is the safer way, and generally followed. [ South ]
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 ]
Love of power, merely to make flunkeys come and go for you, is a love, I should think, which enters only into the minds of persons in a very infantine state. [ Carlyle ]
There is something on earth greater than arbitrary power. The thunder, the lightning, and the earthquake are terrific, but the judgment of the people is more. [ Daniel Webster ]
Happy is the man who can endure the highest and the lowest fortune. He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power. [ Seneca ]
Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us? [ Goethe ]
Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence! that, with the strong reign of commanding words, dost manage, guide and master the high eminence of men's affections! [ Daniel ]
Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many. [ Lowell ]
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 ]
He that loves reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform. [ William Godwin ]
When danger threats, the friend comes forth resolved and shields his friend; in fortune's golden smile what need of friends? Her favoring power wants no auxiliary. [ Euripides ]
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or a Shakespeare. [ F. H. Hedge ]
Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity. [ Hazlitt ]
No man's credit can fall so low but that, if he bear his shame as he should do, and profit by it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to redeem his reputation. [ Lord Nottingham ]
Life is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass rapidly over them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us. [ Voltaire ]
If human love hath power to penetrate the veil - and hath it not? - then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them. [ Hawthorne ]
When I behold the passion for ornamentation, and the corresponding power, I feel as if women had so far shown what they are bad for, rather than what they are good for. [ Julia Ward Howe ]
The great business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements. [ Pliny ]
It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. [ Sterne ]
A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them? [ Victor Hugo ]
Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it, who, half through, gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds. [ William Shakespeare ]
As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert: that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates. [ Johnson ]
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether. [ Coleridge ]
When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
But the sublime, when it is introduced at a seasonable moment, has often carried all before it with the rapidity of lightning, and shown at a glance the mighty power of genius. [ Longinus ]
Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. [ Sir J. Reynolds ]
Words are but poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realises; and hence the secret of its strange, ineffable power. [ H. R. Haweis ]
God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is. [ Alexander Maclaren ]
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 ]
A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power. [ Boileau ]
We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs; the Lord hath the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom, and it will be well for us to learn to wait. [ Spurgeon ]
Great is the power of Eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears. [ Sterne ]
The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands. [ Burke ]
A true friend will appear such in leaving us to act according to our intimate conviction, will cherish this nobleness of sentiment, will never wish to substitute his power for our own. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken; there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Death alone of the gods loves not gifts, nor do you need to offer incense or libations; he cares not for altar nor hymn; the goddess of Persuasion alone of the gods has no power over him. [ Horace ]
My own firm conviction is that no education can make a writer. The heart must be hot behind the pen. Out of the abundance of life and its manifold experiences comes the power to touch life. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. [ Colton ]
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 ]
There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself. [ Hazlitt ]
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night. It is the shadow that cleaves to us, go where we will, and which leaves us only when we leave the light of life. [ William Ewart Gladstone ]
No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc. [ Emerson ]
He who, when he hath the power, doeth not good, when he loses the means will suffer distress. There is not a more unfortunate wretch than the oppressor; for in the day of adversity nobody is his friend. [ Saadi ]
Valor and power may gain a lasting memory, but where are they when the brave and mighty are departed? Their effects may remain, but they live not in them any more than the fire in the work of the potter. [ Hartley Coleridge ]
Delusive ideas are the motives of the greatest part of mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are incited. The world in the eye of a philosopher may be said to be a large madhouse. [ Mackenzie ]
Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous. [ Johnson ]
There is power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements hold him to his task; what has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in use. [ R. W. Emerson ]
A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet music. [ Phillips Brooks ]
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings, - as some savage tribes determine the power of their muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence. [ Hazlitt ]
The power of painter or poet to describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal, but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith. [ Ruskin ]
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. [ Washington Irving ]
A taste for flowers and a love for the beautiful, as exhibited in the wonders of creative power, are evidences of a refined and sensitive nature, and peculiar traits of character which distinguish man from the lower order of animals. [ Celestia R. Colby ]
Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. [ Emerson ]
Persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul, wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
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 ]
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature. [ Guizot ]
There is no power like that of oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day. [ Henry Clay ]
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 ]
Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant. [ Hazlitt ]
How dear the sure counsel of a present friend, whose heavenly power failing, the lonely one sinks in silence; for earnest thought and resolution, locked within his breast, are slowly ripened; the presence of the loved one soon warms them into being. [ Goethe ]
There are two ways of attaining au important end - force and perseverance. Force falls to the lot only of the privileged few, but austere and sustained perseverance can be practiced by the most insignificant. Its silent power grows irresistible with time. [ Madame Swetchine ]
O mothers! reflect upon the power that your Maker has placed in your hands; there is no earthly influence to be compared with yours; there is no combination of causes so powerful in promoting the happiness or misery of our race, as the instructions of home! [ J. S. C. Abbott ]
We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has not the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching shrieking fish. [ Leigh Hunt ]
It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is finally to be revealed. And what a revelation will that be! [ Horace Bushnell ]
Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment: it imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. [ Whipple ]
Eyes speak all languages; wait for no letter of introduction; they ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning, nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
No language can express the power and beauty, and heroism and majesty of a mother's love; it shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over the wastes of worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star in heaven. [ E. H. Chapin ]
This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. [ Goldsmith ]
The press is not only free; it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people. [ Beaconsfield ]
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 silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]
Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage. [ Victor Cousin ]
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 first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, - a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colors is very properly called the language of the art. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
How often in the halls of legislation does eloquence unmask corruption, expose intrigue, and overthrow tyranny! In the cause of mercy it is omnipotent. It is bold in the consciousness of its superiority, fearless and unyielding in the purity of its motives. All opposition it destroys; all power it defies. [ Henry Melville ]
The failure of his mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence: indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy. [ Sir Benjamin Brodie ]
To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails. [ Humboldt ]
Wise men, for the most part, are silent at present, and good men powerless; the senseless vociferate, and the heartless govern; while all social law and providence are dissolved by the enraged agitation of a multitude, among whom every villain has a chance of power, every simpleton of praise, and every scoundrel of fortune. [ John Ruskin ]
A miracle is a supernatural event, whose antecedent forces are beyond our finite vision, whose design is the display of almighty power for the accomplishment of almighty purposes, and whose immediate result, as regards man, is his recognition of God as the Supreme Ruler of all things, and of His will as the only supreme law. [ A. E. Kittredge ]
Infinity is the retirement in which perfect love and wisdom only dwell with God. In infinity and eternity the skeptic sees an abyss in which all is lost. I see in them the residence of Almighty power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support. Here, holding by the pillars of heaven, I exist - I stand fast. [ Miller ]
Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle; and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hardworking, and intent men - their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others. [ Samuel Smiles ]
The invention of printing added a new element of power to the race. From that hour, in a most especial sense, the brain and not the arm, the thinker and not the soldier, books and not kings, were to rule the world; and weapons, forged in the mind, keen-edged and brighter than the sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and the battle-axe. [ Whipple ]
Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose - a power to accomplish all that we undertake;
for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry. Pope in painting. Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. [ Colton ]
It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be obtained or retained. [ Beaconsfield ]
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 ]
By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. [ Hazlitt ]
The language of the heart - the language which comes from the heart
and goes to the heart
- is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language - difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied. [ Bovee ]
Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. [ Montaigne ]
Music may be classed into natural, social, sacred, and martial; it is the twin sister of poetry, and like it has the power to sway the feelings and command the mind; in devotion it breathes the pure spirit of inspiration and love; in martial scenes it rouses the soul to fearless deeds of daring and valor, while it alleviates the cares, and enhances the innocent and cheerful enjoyments of domestic life. [ Acton ]
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! [ Emerson ]
The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale. [ Colton ]
The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge - conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him. [ Ruskin ]
You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home - home to a Father's house - to an eternal home? [ Mark Hopkins ]
The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. [ Ruskin ]
We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it. Let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power. [ Emerson ]
Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. [ Colton ]
My friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to the father) - What's his name?
The father hesitated, then whispered back: His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann.
[ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]