Al David Quotes
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.
Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane and which the antidote.
It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing.
There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.
Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
We 've wholly forgotten how to die. But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.
One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.
There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.
There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.
There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
If common sense had been consulted, how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon or divine sense, how few marriages such as we witness would ever have taken place!
The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.
Tough times don't last but tough people do. No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch. Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.
You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.
If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.
I delight to come to my bearings,... not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sitthoughtfully while it goes by.
No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
