Emotions and Feelings

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

To think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.

Real sorrow is incompatible with hope. No matter how great that sorrow may be, hope raises it one hundred cubits higher.

Real sorrow is incompatible with hope. No matter how great that sorrow may be, hope raises it one hundred cubits higher.

If you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.

A hush is over everything— / Silent as women wait for love, / The world is waiting for the spring.

In a crowd, on a journey at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.

I had rather ride on an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me.

The only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them.

If only the sense of actuality can be lulled—and it sleeps for ever in most historians—there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.

Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute.

It is not that the Englishman can't feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks—his pipe might fall out if he did.

Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier generations?

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, / It is not far— / It never will be far.