Man ... can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way.
He [Lincoln] had mastered it {the Bible] absolutely...mastered it so that he became almost 'a man of one Book', who knew that Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein.
To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world; war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendour. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure but does not complain, for it is the friction which polishes him. It is the pressure which refines and makes him noble
Marius and Cosette did not ask where this would lead them. They looked at themselves as arrived. It is a strange pretension for men to ask that love should lead them somewhere.
Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?
The mere change of custom, even though it may be of advantage in some respects, unsettles men by reason of the novelty: therefore, if it brings no advantage, it does much harm by unprofitably disturbing the Church.
My only refuge, as a serious young man, from the despair of my financial burden to my family, is that I did everything I could to never permit myself any amusements or diversions except those afforded by my studies.
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker]
Man only remains hypnotised with the false idea of an ego. When this ghost is off from us, all dreams vanish, and then it is found that the one Self only exists from the highest Being to a blade of grass.
... men of power are seldom protected from their own infirmities by the men subordinate to them -- not even in the sad circumstances of mental exhaustion.
Strive not for singularity in dress; Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday - that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run
ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?