A small poet repeats himself like a clock.

Sorrow may be a good thing for a woman's heart, but it is a poor cosmetic for her face.

A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.

Patience is the analogue of God's serenity.

When we pray for death we really desire a fuller life.

An evil thought in a soul is like a water-rat swimming in a pond at evening: the rat destroys the iridescent reflection of heaven in the water.

Patience is moral elasticity.

Some men, like a wet dog, sprinkle a shower of advice over you when you are least prepared for a bath.

He gives a ripe apple for an apple-blossom that changes an old love for a new.

Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.

To get rid of mosquitoes you must drain the pools on the lowlands, and to get rid of socialists you must drain off injustice from the slums.

Charity is the only lubricant that keeps the axle of the world creaking.

Sorrow like rain makes roses and mud.

Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.

A true poet comes among us only once in a generation, sometimes not once in a century, and ... certain civilized nations never produce a great poet. We suffer from dearth of poets, not from lack of love for poetry.

Profanity is the stench of a shallow and stagnant mind stirred by the wind of anger.

Every April God rewrites the Book of Genesis.

Shame is the turnkey that keeps our evil desires in jail.

Ugliness is a point of view.

In your admiration for truth do not forget that truth can sometimes be as foul as a lie.

It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.

Some that will hold a creed unto martyrdom will not hold the truth against a sneering laugh.

Science is truth with her wings clipped.

The swing of art is circular, from form to formalism, from formalism to formlessness, from formlessness to form again.

The mother of prudence is reason, but fear is its cousin.

A father is a man that has two or more souls to save or lose.

Reputation is an interpretation, more or less accurate, of character.

If you keep your eyes so fixed on Heaven that you never look at the Earth, you will stumble into Hell.

If you combine all the spectral rays into a single beam, you get white light; and, if you combine all the virtues into a single beam, you get charity.

Do not invest your whole life in one hope.

God's image is in every man, high or low--a road puddle holds the moon as well as the sea.

A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun--likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.

A man that turns to God in his old age is like a child that eats a peach and generously offers its mother the stone.

A child is an uncut diamond.

Sell anything for justice, but look out for counterfeits.

Most virtues and flowers bloom best on poor soil.

Love dwindles by pairing.

Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

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