I Samuel Quotes

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Unhappy, but not unhappy enough.

There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind.

Words fail, there are times when even they fail.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

To be of no Church is dangerous.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.

A difficulty for every solution.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Do not choose to be wrong for the sake of being different.

I'm not as angry as I used to be. But I can get in touch with that anger pretty quickly if I feel my space is being invaded or somebody is not treating me with the respect that I think I want.

We all recognize that in recent decades, many important achievements have helped create a cleaner, healthier environment, yet our national needs in environmental health are not being fully met.

Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

I have been committed to carrying out my duties... in accordance with both the letter and spirit of all applicable rules of ethics and canons of conduct.

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

This music won't do. There's not enough sarcasm in it.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

I trust most people. Not producers.

Women have the understanding of the heart, which is better than that of the head.

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.