Life and Existence

God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.

Those move easiest who have learned to dance.

A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them: those we spent with a favorite book.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them: those we spent with a favorite book.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

Serving God is doing good to man. But praying is thought an easier service and is therefore more generally chosen.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s .

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.