This continuation page contains additional source-backed quotations not shown in the initial 50-quotation overview. Return to the topic guide and browse collection.
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.
An Essay on Criticism, Part III; Pope joins good nature and good sense before contrasting ordinary human error with the higher moral act of forgiveness.
“For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.”
Confidence without sufficient judgment can make haste look like courage when caution would be wiser.
An Essay on Criticism; original capitalization is lightly normalized elsewhere on the site.
“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”
Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.
The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.
“Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man can think only one thing clearly at a time”
Schopenhauer makes clarity of sentence structure answer to the limits of attention, arguing that prose should help the reader follow one thought distinctly instead of forcing several at once.
The Art of Literature, section “On Style,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The following discussion criticizes overloaded parenthetical sentence construction.
“Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of speech, let a writer enlarge his thoughts.”
Schopenhauer argues that stronger writing should come from fuller thought rather than from compressing weak ideas into mannered phrasing, tying style to intellectual substance.
The Art of Literature, section “On Style,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The English volume rearranges material drawn from Schopenhauer’s Parerga.
“less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met”
The maxim shifts attention from events alone to the way a person receives and interprets them, making response and temperament part of Schopenhauer’s account of well-being.
The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. This is a philosophical claim about temperament, not a denial that external circumstances can matter greatly.
“Nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so.”
Misfortune and judgment are separated: external circumstances can be painful, but the interpretation attached to them strongly influences whether a life is experienced as wholly ruined.
The Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, Chapter IV, H. R. James translation (Elliot Stock, 1897), printed page 60 in Project Gutenberg #14328. The retained catalog wording ‘Nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so.’ is a frozen clause extract from James’s longer sentence beginning ‘So true is it that...’ in Lady Philosophy’s argument about Fortune, judgment and the instability of external circumstances. It remains late-antique philosophical consolation mediated by translation, not modern cognitive-science or clinical mental-health evidence.
“Grow into the habit of talking about the bright side of life.”
Washington presents constructive speech as a cultivated habit rather than an automatic temperament, while the surrounding lecture still acknowledges life’s darker side.
Character Building, “Two Sides of Life,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The advice belongs to a longer argument against habitual discouraging talk.
“you yourself can make it beautiful if you will.”
David’s father tells him that even when the world appears bleak, his own choices and actions can still contribute something beautiful to it.
Just David, represented by Project Gutenberg #440. The sentence appears in a farewell letter from David’s father that other characters read after his death. It is framed fictional advice inside the novel, not Porter speaking autobiographically, and it does not imply that personal attitude can remove every external hardship.
“It’s better by far to hunt for a star, than the spots on the sun abiding.”
Wilcox contrasts constructive attention with habitual fault-finding, recommending a perspective that actively looks for what remains promising without claiming flaws do not exist.
Poems of Cheer, “As You Go Through Life,” represented 1914 edition; Project Gutenberg #3238. The poem explicitly acknowledges that things go wrong, so the line is about chosen attention rather than denial.
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.”
Epictetus places much emotional disturbance in interpretation rather than in events alone, making judgment a central target for practice.
Enchiridion 5; English wording varies by translation.
“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.”
Epictetus separates an event from the judgment placed on it, making interpretation a practical point of leverage.
Enchiridion 5 in George Long’s translation; the passage distinguishes events from the opinions that disturb us.
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”
Bacon describes reading as active judgment rather than passive agreement or reflexive opposition, making careful consideration the central habit of serious study.
Of Studies, in Bacon’s instructions for how different kinds of books should be read.
“Everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths.”
Nietzsche argues for historical philosophizing: concepts and human arrangements should be examined as things that developed rather than treated as timeless givens.
Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 2; Helen Zimmern translation.
“Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are.”
The warning is that simplified partial explanations can spread more easily precisely because they remove the complications that fuller understanding would have to preserve.
Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 578, “Partial Knowledge”; Helen Zimmern translation; sentence shortened before the final clause about popularity and persuasion.
“We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer.”
The aphorism suggests that inquiry is limited by the conceptual capacities of the person asking, making intellectual growth partly a matter of becoming able to formulate and recognize better questions.
The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 196; Thomas Common translation.
“What dost thou Believe in?—In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew.”
The aphorism calls for a revaluation of inherited measures rather than accepting established rankings of importance as final.
The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 269; Thomas Common translation.
“Originality.—What is originality? To see something which has no name as yet, and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face.”
Originality is framed as noticing and naming what others already encounter but have not yet conceptualized clearly.
The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 261, “Originality”; Thomas Common translation.
“ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.”
The narrator uses irony to show how not knowing enough can make almost anything seem plausible, widening speculation rather than understanding.
Daniel Deronda; narrator’s ironic observation while Gwendolen speculates about Grandcourt, represented from Project Gutenberg #7469.
“When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion.”
Pooter’s perfect comeback arrives only after the argument has ended, a familiar social failure made comic by his confidence that the delayed answer can simply be saved for later.
The Diary of a Nobody, Chapter I, April 6 entry; Project Gutenberg #1026. Immediately after Borset leaves, Charles Pooter thinks of the “splendid answer” he should have given and decides to save it for another occasion. This is the same continuous comic exchange as the preceding Borset record and illustrates Pooter’s delayed wit rather than generic communication advice.
“the desire and will to work is optimism itself.”
Optimism is defined here as willingness to participate and act, sharply distinguishing Keller’s position from passive expectation that circumstances will improve on their own.
Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. Keller is describing her future-facing desire for useful activity as college ends.
“With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.”
Language is remembered as opening several capacities at once—thought, hope and a fuller experience of living—rather than merely adding a vocabulary item.
Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. Keller is reflecting on her own early experience of language and education.
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
Hope is presented as an active foundation for achievement: confidence in possibility helps sustain the effort needed to move from intention to result.
Optimism: An Essay; Keller connects optimism with purposeful action rather than passive cheerfulness.
“Blindness has no limiting effect upon mental vision.”
Physical limitation does not automatically determine the range of thought, imagination, learning, or intellectual ambition available to a person.
The World I Live In (1908), Chapter XII, “The Larger Sanctions,” printed page 160, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller states that blindness has no limiting effect upon mental vision while defending the role of imagination, correspondence and inherited language in apprehending realities beyond immediate sensation.
“Ideas make the world we live in, and impressions furnish ideas.”
Experience is mediated by interpretation: sensory impressions become ideas, and those ideas help shape the meaningful world a person inhabits.
The World I Live In (1908), Chapter I, “The Seeing Hand,” printed page 7, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller writes that ideas make the world we live in and impressions furnish ideas while explaining how touch-sensations, associations and imagination construct her experienced world.
“The universe is wider than our views of it.”
Reality exceeds any one viewpoint, so confidence in a perspective should leave room for what has not yet been seen.
Walden, Conclusion; Thoreau uses the sentence while arguing that familiar human views do not exhaust reality.
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
Daily life becomes something that can be shaped deliberately through attention, choices, and routine.
Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”
“Act—act in the living Present!”
The imperative shifts attention from regret and speculation toward action available in the present.
A Psalm of Life; the line follows the instruction to let the dead past bury its dead.
“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.”
Circumstances can expose habits of thought and character that were already present, turning difficulty into information about what needs attention or change.
As a Man Thinketh; Allen uses circumstance as a mirror for character and habitual thought.
“A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts.”
Allen connects achievement with deliberately raising the standards and direction of one’s thinking.
As a Man Thinketh, “Achievement.”
“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”
Allen links repeated thought patterns with character, arguing that inner habits eventually shape outward conduct.
As a Man Thinketh, “Thought and Character.”
“Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.”
Romantic love is compared to an unavoidable childhood illness, making intense emotion comic by treating it as something people catch, endure, and eventually recover from.
The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being in Love”; the comparison opens the essay’s mock-medical treatment of romance.
“A boy’s love comes from a full heart; a man’s is more often the result of a full stomach.”
The contrast punctures mature romantic eloquence by suggesting comfort and appetite can masquerade as passion, while youthful awkwardness may reveal more direct feeling.
The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being in Love”; the narrator contrasts youthful shyness with the polished declarations of older men.
“Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at.”
The narrator gives the dog a mock life-purpose centered on obstruction and provoking people, turning ordinary pet mischief into a grand statement of ambition.
Three Men in a Boat, packing episode; the narrator describes Montmorency repeatedly inserting himself into whatever the men are trying to pack.
“I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.”
Nothing physical has changed, but the narrator’s interpretation has transformed completely; the comic contrast shows how anxious reading can alter felt experience without new evidence.
Three Men in a Boat, Chapter I; this sentence ends the British Museum self-diagnosis sequence.
“Curiosity in children is but an appetite after knowledge; and therefore ought to be encouraged in them.”
Locke treats curiosity as a natural drive toward knowledge and argues that education should protect and guide it rather than shame sincere questions.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Part VIII, section 118. Locke calls children's curiosity an appetite after knowledge and gives practical directions for encouraging questions. The passage remains seventeenth-century educational/parenting counsel rather than contemporary developmental-science or guaranteed learning-outcome evidence.
“A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.”
The sentence argues that education needs genuine stretch: always keeping demands inside proven ability can leave capacity underused.
Autobiography, Chapter I; Mill reflects critically on his father’s demanding teaching while preserving this principle about intellectual effort.
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
Understanding a position requires serious contact with competing arguments; familiarity with only one side can produce confidence without real comprehension.
On Liberty, Chapter 2; Mill argues for open discussion because opposing views expose weaknesses and sharpen understanding.
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow.”
The teaching redirects attention from imagined future trouble toward responsibilities that actually belong to today.
Matthew 6:34 in the King James Version; the opening sentence is quoted here.
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.”
Self-command is valued above outward dominance, redefining strength as the ability to govern one’s response.
Proverbs 16:32 in the King James Version; the first comparison is quoted here.
“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”
Fear is acknowledged directly rather than denied, then paired with a deliberate act of trust.
Psalm 56:3 in the King James Version.
“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
Attention and attitude can influence enjoyment by making a person more willing to notice possibilities for interest and pleasure in ordinary circumstances.
Anne of Green Gables; Anne describes deliberate enjoyment as a practiced attitude toward experience.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
The line emphasizes the role of habitual judgment in shaping lived experience, a recurring theme in Stoic practice.
Common English rendering of a passage in Meditations; wording varies by translation.
“The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.”
Retaliation can reproduce the conduct we condemn; the stronger response is to preserve one’s own standards.
Meditations, Book VI, in George Long’s translation.
“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.””
The statement asks whether part of suffering is sustained by the story attached to an event rather than by the event alone.
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”
The aphorism mocks reformers who find other people’s behavior easier to correct than their own, using a compact reversal to expose self-exemption and misplaced certainty.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XV epigraph; a Calendar maxim immediately before the eggs-in-one-basket passage.
“We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.”
The food comparison mocks pretension: the problem is not merely being ordinary, but adopting an inflated estimate of one’s own status and expecting others to accept it.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter V epigraph, introduced as a remark concerning upstarts in the Calendar sequence.
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
The epigram satirizes the irritation produced when another person’s good conduct silently exposes our own shortcomings, making moral example feel inconvenient rather than inspiring.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XIX epigraph; one of the Calendar maxims before the chapter.
“When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.”
The joke turns the conventional promise of a better afterlife into self-interested moral calculation: the speaker suddenly worries about spending eternity with people he already disliked.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Calendar epigraph preceding the October speculation maxim.
“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.”
The joke turns travel into a mirror for vanity: unfamiliar settings can expose affectation and foolishness that remain easier to overlook at home.
The Innocents Abroad (1869), Chapter XXIII. Twain jokes that the gentle reader will not know what a consummate ass he can become until going abroad while satirizing travelers who adopt foreign affectations. Verified against the scan-backed 1869 first edition; the line remains comic first-person travel narration, not a literal rule about every traveler.
“You can’t yourself, but exterior influences can do it.”
The Old Man claims that opinions can change, but attributes the change to new evidence, conversation, study, and other influences entering from outside the individual.
What Is Man?, Old Man replying to the Young Man’s question about changing an automatic opinion; this is dialogic determinism, not neutral cognitive science.
“We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out Gobelins.”
Within the dialogue’s deterministic framework, the practical conclusion is to use one’s actual capacities fully without measuring every effort against another person’s exceptional gifts.
What Is Man?, Old Man concluding the Shakespeare/Gobelin comparison; “Gobelins” refers to elaborate tapestry and functions as the contrast with an ordinary sewing-machine.
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness.”
Montaigne associates wisdom with a settled, clear disposition rather than with performative gloom or intellectual severity.
Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXV, ‘Of the Education of Children,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 05 #3585 / Complete Essays #3600. The cheerfulness sentence belongs to Montaigne’s account of philosophy as forming a serene, active way of life rather than a gloomy scholastic display.
“Yet a habit of happy thought would transform his life into harmony and beauty.”
Marden’s claim reflects the book’s central period philosophy: repeated patterns of attention can alter how a person experiences ordinary life.
Cheerfulness as a Life Power; Project Gutenberg #18394. Context notes distinguish motivational rhetoric from modern psychological evidence.
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
Wilde uses deliberate contradiction to suggest that solemnity is not the only way to take life seriously.
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
The line contrasts difficult circumstances with the direction of attention, leaving room for aspiration without denying hardship.
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Third Act, Project Gutenberg #790. Lord Darlington says that all are in the gutter but some look at the stars during ironic banter about vice, virtue and his love for a married woman. It is comic dramatic dialogue, not Oscar Wilde autobiography or a context-free motivational doctrine.
“Opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance?”
Opinion is treated as an intermediate state: it is not complete ignorance, but it also lacks the clarity and stability of knowledge.
The Republic, Book V; Socrates places opinion between knowledge and ignorance in the argument about what each apprehends.
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
Emerson argues that mature character requires enough independence to resist conformity when conviction points elsewhere.
Essays, First Series, essay II, “Self-Reliance,” Project Gutenberg #2944. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” follows Emerson’s claim that society conspires against the manhood of its members through conformity. The represented Gutenberg witness prints a comma after “man,” while the frozen catalog quotation omits that punctuation; the wording is otherwise the same. It remains Transcendentalist moral rhetoric about self-trust and independence rather than a universal instruction to reject social norms or expertise.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Emerson attacks rigid consistency when it prevents people from revising judgment in the light of new thought.
Essay “Self-Reliance”; Emerson criticizes rigid adherence to past opinions when fresh judgment requires revision.
“Life is a boundless privilege.”
The sentence frames existence as abundant possibility rather than mere duration, encouraging attention to what can still be learned, attempted, appreciated, and created.
The Conduct of Life; Emerson uses the line while describing life as an expanding field of experience rather than a narrowly fixed allotment.
“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting.”
Patience is portrayed as active endurance: the ability to continue without letting delay become defeat.
If—, first stanza; the line frames patience as sustained conduct under delay.
“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you.”
Self-trust is presented alongside humility: the poem immediately asks the reader to allow for other people’s doubts too.
If—, first stanza; the following line qualifies self-confidence with fairness toward doubters.
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”
Composure under collective panic is treated as a form of practical courage and judgment.
If—, opening line; the next line describes being blamed by those around you.
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.”
Kipling’s speaker recommends maintaining steadiness toward both success and failure rather than allowing either outcome to determine one’s character or judgment.
“If—,” in Rewards and Fairies, Project Gutenberg #556. The poem presents a period ideal of masculine self-command through a sequence of conditional tests; the stored lines are literary and moral rhetoric, not a requirement to suppress normal emotion.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Custom can disguise error by making the familiar feel legitimate; critical judgment requires re-examining practices that have escaped scrutiny through repetition.
Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented opening sentence is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine argues that familiarity can make a wrong practice appear right before public argument unsettles the custom.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”
Blake imagines habitual perception as a filter that narrows reality; cleansing it would reveal a less limited world.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14; Blake’s prose-poetic argument about the limits and cleansing of perception.
“What, to our eyes, may seem hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success.”
Immediate appearances can mislead: a failure may reveal another direction or become part of later success, so present defeat need not define the whole trajectory.
The Majesty of Calmness, “Failure as a Success.” The passage is motivational interpretation, not a promise that every loss will produce a better outcome.
“Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest.”
James describes theories as tools for moving inquiry and experience forward rather than final intellectual resting places that eliminate the need for further testing or revision.
Pragmatism, Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”; Project Gutenberg #5116. Capitalization has been normalized from the represented all-caps sentence while the wording is otherwise preserved.
“Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.”
James presents pragmatism as a method that makes theories answer to practical consequences and experience instead of allowing abstract formulations to remain rigid and self-sufficient.
Pragmatism, Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”; Project Gutenberg #5116. The sentence follows James’s claim that theories become instruments rather than final answers.
“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”
James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.
The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”
Physical size is separated from force of character, giving the line its enduring use as a compact statement of spirited strength.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2; Helena describes Hermia during the lovers’ quarrel. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act III transcription.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
The line separates events from the judgments people place on them, a useful distinction for thinking about perception and response.
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2; Hamlet says this to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern while explaining that Denmark feels like a prison to him. The line is dramatic dialogue, not a detached psychological proposition by Shakespeare.
“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”
Preserving some inward freedom after a loss denies the wrongdoer complete control over what the loss becomes.
Othello, Act I, Scene III, reviewed against the scan-backed 1910 First Folio facsimile on Wikisource. The Duke tells Brabantio that continuing to spend grief on an irreversible loss only compounds it; the retained modernized wording corresponds to the Folio's 'The rob'd that smiles, steales something from the Thiefe.' It is dramatic counsel inside the scene, not Shakespeare autobiography or clinical grief guidance.
