True happiness (if understood)
Consists alone in doing good. [ Thomson ]
Things not understood are admired. [ Proverb ]
Happy were men if they but understood
There is no safety but in doing good. [ John Fountain ]
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 ]
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. [ Pope ]
Thou Great First Cause, least understood. [ Pope ]
Mother, a maiden is a tender thing,
And best by her that bore her understood. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
Thou chiefest good,
Bestowed by heaven, but seldom understood. [ Lucan ]
Creation is great, and cannot be understood. [ Carlyle ]
We understood
Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought.
That one might almost say her body thought. [ Donne ]
Brevity is very good, when we are, or are not, understood. [ Butler ]
Philosophy, well understood, is an excellent road to heaven. [ Chastel ]
Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
A good principle not rightly understood may prove as hurtful as a bad. [ Milton ]
No man should be afraid to die, who hath understood what it is to live. [ Proverb ]
Words are good, but are not the best. The best is not to be understood by words. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than words, was simply doing good. [ Whittier ]
Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature. [ De Finod ]
Oh, poor hearts of poets, eager for the infinite in love, will you never be understood. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
The Christian religion, rightly understood, is the deepest and choicest price of philosophy. [ Sir Thomas Moore ]
There are three things that I have always loved and have never understood: Painting, Music, and Woman. [ Fontanelle ]
Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood. [ Sterne ]
Alphabets, if rightly understood, can be made to tell their own history, as well as the history of those who employed them. [ Prof. Sayce ]
Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. [ Addison ]
Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all. [ Madame Swetchine ]
An enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. [ Burke ]
That Mirabeau understood how to act with others, and by others--this was his genius, this was his originality, this was his greatness. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
No character was ever rightly understood until it had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance only, but of sympathy. [ Carlyle ]
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over. [ Emerson ]
God has made an unerring law for His whole creation, upon principles which, so far as we now know, can never he understood without the aid of mathematics. [ E. D. Mansfield ]
Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael. [ Goethe ]
When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. [ Colton ]
No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath. [ Swift ]
Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light - instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremeties of the earth. [ Lamartine ]
It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. [ Goldsmith ]
Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must be understood that it is not the mere shell that we admire; we are attracted by the idea that this shell is only a beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering. [ Jane Porter ]
Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him. [ Heinrich Heine ]