The dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become merely shows and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and it is mere tinsel. It will not please us as much as when its …
Many go out for wool and return shorn. Cervantes.
What is any man’s discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? Henry David Thoreau.
Whatever is beautiful at all is beautiful in itself. Its beauty ends there, and praise has no part in it. Nothing is the better or the worse for being praised. Thus true beauty needs nothing beyond itself, any more than law, or truth, or kindness, or honor. For none of these gets a single grace …
As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law. Montaigne.
In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an admirable machine. Therefore there is in the world an admirable intelligence, wherever it may be. Yes. This argument is old, but none the worse for that. from Voltaire’s Philosophical …
It is almost as hard for friends to meet as for the morning and evening stars. Tonight then is a rare event, joining in the candlelight two men who were young not long ago, but now are turning grey at the temples. To find that half our friends are dead shocks us, burns our hearts …