Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.

Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.

A lover of Jesus and of the truth . . . can lift himself above
himself in spirit.
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A lover of Jesus and of the truth . . . can lift himself above
himself in spirit.
[Lat., Amator Jesu et veritatis . . . potest se . . . elevare
supra seipsum in spiritu.]

Besides that, when elsewhere the harvest of wheat is most
abundant, there it comes up less by one-fourth than read more

Besides that, when elsewhere the harvest of wheat is most
abundant, there it comes up less by one-fourth than what you have
sowed. There, methinks, it were a proper place for men to sow
their wild oats, where they would not spring up.
[Lat., Post id, frumenti quum alibi messis maxima'st
Tribus tantis illi minus reddit, quam obseveris.
Heu! istic oportet obseri mores malos,
Si in obserendo possint interfieri.]

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
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What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets;
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and read more

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

"Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man unless he can erect
himself above humanity." Here is a read more

"Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man unless he can erect
himself above humanity." Here is a bon mot and a useful desire,
but equally absurd. For to make the handful bigger than the
hand, the armful bigger then the arm, and to hope to stride
further than the stretch of our legs, is impossible and
monstrous. . . . He may lift himself if God lend him His hand of
special grace; he may lift himself . . . by means wholly
celestial. It is for our Christian religion, and not for his
Stoic virtue, to pretend to this divine and miraculous
metamorphosis.

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the read more

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.