The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good
Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.
Love as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it achieves its harmony as seldom as does love by the senses. Frustrated, it creates even greater havoc, for like all love it is a madness.
People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.
The central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and (…) this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.
Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
All of us have failed. One wishes to be punished. One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but do you know, my daughter, that in love — I scarcely dare say it — but in love our very mistakes don’t seem to be able to last long?
She did not suspect that the Abbess was even there hovering about the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens.
So – people a thousand years from now…This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.
But while they continued staring into one another’s face waiting for the miracle of science the pain grew worse.
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners – your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards – who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps
The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place where daughters love their mothers; the other attributes of Heaven you could have for a song.
Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.
And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess.
Perhaps she would learn in time to permit both her daughter and her gods to govern their own affairs.
The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed.
There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.
But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.
[Camila] was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, or her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself.
The marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she is a householder.
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.
I not only bow to the inevitable I am fortified by it.
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
Many plays certainly mine are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation.
That’s the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don’t feel the need to be impatient any longer.
A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference … it pardons shortcomings it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
We live in what is but we find 1 000 ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it.
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just to enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.
Comparisons of one’s lot with others’ teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.
Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you’ll have the miser who’s no liar and the drunkard who’s the benefactor of a whole city.
If a man has no vices he’s in great danger of making vices about his virtues and there’s a spectacle.
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.
The best thing about animals is that they don’t talk much.
I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she’s a householder.
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.