Benjamin Quotes

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

The stage is a supplement to the pulpit, where virtue, according to Plato's sublime idea, moves our love and affection when made visible to the eye.

Singularity in the right hath ruined many; happy those who are convinced of the general opinion.

One day I'll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

The unfortunate are always egotistical.

A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!

From the Taoist point of view, the natural result of this harmonious way of living is happiness.

Revealed religion has no weight with me.

We can know nothing of humankind without knowing something of ourselves. Self-knowledge is the property of those people whose passions have their full play, but who ponder over their results.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

Principle is ever my motto, no expediency.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.

By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and endless in duration.

I want to build as many worlds as possible - each a version of ours with a crack running through it - and not be anchored to any of them.

You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.

Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own--and work is often the keyhole through which you peer.

The sympathy of sorrow is stronger than the sympathy of prosperity.

One event makes another. What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens; and time can only prove which is most for our advantage.

there is a tendency in part of Wall Street people to pay excessive attention to the most recent figures and the present financial picture.

Anger and folly walk cheeck by jowl.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.

There is no gambling like politics.

Let thy discontents be thy secrets

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

What maintains one vice would bring up two children.

A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.

Success has ruined many a man.

Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Be not sick too late, nor well too soon

Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing.

Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

As for our majority... one is enough.

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.

I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.

We cannot learn men from books.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

Departure should be sudden.

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.