Quotes by Essayists - Page 5

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I loafe and invite my soul I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Walt Whitman
Sorrow makes us all children again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are some men above grief and some men below it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What man is there that does not laboriously though all unconsciously himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life.
Maurice Maeterlinck
No one can keep his griefs in their prime they use themselves up.
E. M. Cioran
Every noble crown is and on earth will ever be a crown of thorns.
Thomas Carlyle
Alone alone all all alone Alone on a wide wide sea.
Hartley Coleridge
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing Should certain persons die before they sing.
Hartley Coleridge
A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.
Henry Giles
We never touch but at points.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
He might have proved a useful adjunct if not an ornament to society.
Charles Lamb
Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt.
Thomas Carlyle
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself around your own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
William Hazlitt
Nothing is more simple than greatness indeed to be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.
Charles Péguy
It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The art of art the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity: nothing is better than simplicity.
Walt Whitman
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
To be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
William Hazlitt
Silence is deep as Eternity speech shallow as Time.
Thomas Carlyle
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Thomas Carlyle
The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.
Leigh Hunt
That man who lives for self alone Lives for the meanest mortal known.
Joaquin Miller
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
Agnes Repplier
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Discontent is want of self-discipline it is infirmity of will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Joseph Joubert
Our awesome responsibility to ourselves to our children and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.
Flannery O'Connor
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
Adrienne Rich
It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous but rather the studious way we try to hide them and our desire to act as if they did not exist.
Giacomo Leopardi
Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.
Adrienne Rich
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Thomas Mann
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf
A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
Susan Griffin
Self-command is the main elegance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.
Arnold Bennett
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender
I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway less burdened.
Flannery O'Connor
As is our confidence so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
William Hazlitt
Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
William Hazlitt
It is only fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.
Charles Dudley Warner
We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
William Styron
I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.
Maurice Maeterlinck
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
Samuel McChord Crothers
The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
José Ortega y Gasset
Genius is expansive irresistible and irresistibly expansive. If it is in you no cords can confine it.
Gail Hamilton
I exist as I am that is enough If no other in the world be aware I sit content And if each and all be aware I sit content.
Walt Whitman
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may he will only feel satisfaction as he is satisfied in himself.
William Hazlitt