All Quotes

“From Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, Book IX, section 8”

“Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William . Ah, he's full of sermons”

“I do not oscillate in Emerson 's rainbow , but prefer rather to hang myself in mine own halter than swing in any other man's swing. Yet I think Emerson is more than a brilliant fellow. Be his stuff begged, borrowed, or stolen, or of his own domestic manufacture he is an uncommon man. Swear he is a humbug”

“And do not think, my boy, that because I, impulsively broke forth in jubillations over Shakspeare , that, therefore, I am of the number of the snobs who burn their tuns of rancid fat at his shrine. No, I would stand afar off & alone, & burn some pure Palm oil, the product of some overtopping trunk.”

“It will be a strange sort of book , tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;”

“There is a certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our opinion, was never more powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne . We mean the tragedies of human thought in its own unbiassed, native, and profounder workings. We think that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the usable truth ever entered more deeply than into this man's. By usable truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst to him,”

“Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory”

“In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous”

“Whence came you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips”

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?) Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (June 1, 1851).”

“Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning. Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 158”

“The marvel of the Bhagavad”

“In the beginning was the myth . God , in his search for self”

“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy . I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”

“That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer , and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die !”

“Sadness when there should be Joy , hatred when there should be love show compassion because we can be more because we both have scars and pain that no one will ever understand but us so be with me not against me and bring us where we were happy and free .”

“Once my world was full of friends,”

“I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength. p. 4”

“That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged”

“Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love... p. 88”

“Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assume importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives. p. 32”

“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. The Iliad, Book 1”

“There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. The Odyssey, Book 6”

“Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured. The Odyssey, Book 15”

“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worthy to die for.”

“A sympathetic man can make even a stranger his friend.”

“Light is the task when many share the toil.”

“The journey is long and full of hardships.”

“Courage is not something that can be measured, but it is something that can be given.”

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep. The Odyssey, Book 11”