John Quotes
Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.
Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.
Memory of our good works makes us negligent and leads to arrogance. Do not think of your good deeds, so that God may remember them.
And all men are ready to pass judgement on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature.
...there is nothing that has been created without some reason, even if human nature is incapable of knowing precisely the reason for them all.
The Holy Scriptures do not know any distinctions. They enjoin that all lead the life of monks.
In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it.
What is a logical mind?... It is the antiseptic which destroys the bacilli of unreason whereby true happiness is vivified.
I am often disgusted at hearing young people I know, declare that they are afraid of doing this or that, because they MIGHT be killed.
Everyone who comes out does a very foolish thing in bringing such a quantity of clothes that he never wants.
In faith, I'm a believer in the do's - you know, love your neighbor, love your enemy. I don't spend a lot of time thinking on the don'ts 'cause I can't get the do's right.
Everybody across this country knows that the tsunami of drugs is threatening their very families.
Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.
It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.
I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.
An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery.
I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you.
Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.
For as fire is kindled by fire, so is a poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.
Love masters agony; the soul that seemed Forsaken feels her present God again And in her Father's arms Contented dies away.
The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.
The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.
The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.
Although man is already ninety per cent water, the Prohibitionists are not yet satisfied.
Bring forth the raisins and the nuts- Tonight All-Hallows' Spectre struts Along the moonlit way.
Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.
In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace.
It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.
It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.
There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.
No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.