Life and Existence

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older one climbs with surprising strides.

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

With Pleasure own your Errors past, And make each day a Critic on the last.

Generally speaking, the errors of religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart.

For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

Eloquence is feeling pouring itself to other minds, courting their sympathy.

In the drowsy dark caves of the mind dreams build their nest with fragments dropped from day’s caravan.

What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is . . . for us humans.

Adversity in immunological doses has its uses; more than that crushes.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.

Perhaps adversity is a great teacher, but he charges a high price for his lessons, and often the profit we take from them is not worth the price they have cost us.