It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth while we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why, then we rack the value. —Shakespeare.

A man is known to his dog by the smell – to the tailor by the coat – to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of man is known only to God. —Ruskin.

He who seems not to himself more than he is, is more than he seems. —Goethe.

Light is above us, and color surrounds us; but if we have not light and color in our eyes, we shall not perceive them outside us. —Goethe.

When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it. —Joubert.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. —George Eliot.

Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty. —Margaret Fuller.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you. —Joubert.

Architecture.– Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure. —Ruskin.

Argument.– There is no arguing with Johnson; for if his pistol misses fire he knocks you down with the butt end of it. —Goldsmith.

Weak arguments are often thrust before my path; but although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword. —Bishop Whately.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled. The greatest part of men cannot judge of reasoning, and are impressed by character; so that if you allow your adversary a respectable character, they will think that, though you differ from him, you may be in the wrong. Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in a battle. —Johnson.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. —Colton.

An ill argument introduced with deference will procure more credit than the profoundest science with a rough, insolent, and noisy management. —Locke.

One may say, generally, that no deeply rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse argument. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic. —G. H. Lewes.

A reason is often good, not because it is conclusive, but because it is dramatic, – because it has the stamp of him who urges it, and is drawn from his own resources. For there are arguments ex homine as well as ad hominem. —Joubert.

If I were to deliver up my whole self to the arbitrament of special pleaders, to-day I might be argued into an atheist, and to-morrow into a pickpocket. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Aristocracy.– And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who. —De Foe.

What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier? —Walter Scott.

If in an aristocracy the people be virtuous, they will enjoy very nearly the same happiness as in a popular government, and the state will become powerful. —Montesquieu.

An aristocracy is the true, the only support of a monarchy. Without it the State is a vessel without a rudder – a balloon in the air. A true aristocracy, however, must be ancient. Therein consists its real force, – its talismanic charm. —Napoleon.

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. —Richard Rumbold.

Armor.– The best armor is to keep out of gunshot. —Lord Bacon.

Our armor all is strong, our cause the best; then reason wills our hearts should be as good. —Shakespeare.

Art.– Rules may teach us not to raise the arms above the head; but if passion carries them, it will be well done: passion knows more than art. —Baron.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the underworkman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master. —Hume.

The mission of art is to represent nature; not to imitate her. —W. M. Hunt.

True art is not the caprice of this or that individual, it is a solemn page either of history or prophecy; and when, as always in Dante and occasionally in Byron, it combines and harmonizes this double mission, it reaches the highest summit of power. —Mazzini.

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. —Schiller.

Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature – takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, namely, the mind and the soul of man. —Bulwer-Lytton.

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. —Schopenhaufer.

He who seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius, as he must needs paint for other minds and not for his own. —Washington Allston.

In art, form is everything; matter, nothing. —Heinrich Heine.

Strange thing art, especially music. Out of an art a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile, at best a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and, unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to follow, an humble, reverent visitor. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Art does not imitate, but interpret. —Mazzini.

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. —Heinrich Heine.

In art there is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste. —Bruyère.

Never judge a work of art by its defects. —Washington Allston.

Asceticism.– I recommend no sour ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fibre too much, nor a passion too many. I would steal no violet from the young maiden's bosom; rather would I fill her arms with more fragrant roses. But a life merely of pleasure, or chiefly of pleasure, is always a poor and worthless life, not worth the living; always unsatisfactory in its course, always miserable in its end. —Theodore Parker.

In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell. —Byron.

Three forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake – as supposed – of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester. —Ruskin.

Aspiration.– The negro king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the poor African; for every man is but another negro king, and would like to appear in a color different from that with which Fate has bedaubed him. —Heinrich Heine.

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that – to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. —George Eliot.

The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it. —Quarles.

There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless soul, like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! —Chapin.

Oh for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. —Shakespeare.

The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high. —Thoreau.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. —George Eliot.

Associates.– Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he makes his wings shorter. —Bacon.

Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shall enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there. —Quarles.

A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze. —Diogenes.

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant and noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfactory and unsafe. —Landor.

Those who are unacquainted with the world take pleasure in the intimacy of great men; those who are wiser dread the consequences. —Horace.

Atheism.– By burning an atheist, you have lent importance to that which was absurd, interest to that which was forbidding, light to that which was the essence of darkness. For atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction. —Colton.

One of the most daring beings in creation, a contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying his existence. —John Foster.

Authority.– Reasons of things are rather to be taken by weight than tale. —Jeremy Collier.

The world is ruled by the subordinates, not by their chiefs. —Charles Buxton.

Authors.– Authors may be divided into falling stars, planets, and fixed stars: the first have a momentary effect. The second have a much longer duration. But the third are unchangeable, possess their own light, and work for all time. —Schopenhaufer.

Satire lies about men of letters during their lives, and eulogy after their death. —Voltaire.

It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine. It is for the same reason that La Fontaine is held in such high esteem among the French. It is not for his worth as a poet, but for the greatness of his character which obtrudes in his writings. —Goethe.

Choose an author as you choose a friend. —Roscommon.

Herder and Schiller both in their youth intended to study as surgeons, but Destiny said: "No, there are deeper wounds than those of the body, – heal the deeper!" and they wrote. —Richter.

A woman who writes commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and decreases the number of women. —Alphonse Karr.

Thanks and honor to the glorious masters of the pen. —Hood.

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down. —Colton.

Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are, the turbid looks most profound. —Landor.

When we look back upon human records, how the eye settles upon writers as the main landmarks of the past. —Bulwer-Lytton.

Autumn.– Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness. —Keats.

The Sabbath of the year. —Logan.

Avarice.– Though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. —Thomas Paine.

Avarice is more unlovely than mischievous. —Landor.

The German poet observes that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! —Bulwer-Lytton.

Worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world than any mortal drug. —Shakespeare.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. —Johnson.