Poems List

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

People seldom improve when they have no other model, but themselves to copy after.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them.

For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day, but he, who is in battle slain, can never rise and fight again.

Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.

No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.”

“I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it.”

“The more they lack material things, the more they indulge themselves when they can, but the less is their satisfaction with this world and they hunger for life after death(on Russian slave laborers.)”

“Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone”

“How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?”

“I can't be overwhelmingly happy. I'm never free for a moment day and night from the uncertainty in which we live these days, which excludes any carefree plans for tomorrow and casts a shadow over all the days to come.”

“The sun still shines.”

“It is such a splendid sunny day and I have to go.”