Quotes · Skopia

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Man and nature8 quotes

Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838 Human subtlety... Will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519 All that is in harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1843 Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. — Henry David Thoreau · 1853 In God's wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. — John Muir · 1890 All 8 quotes →

Love6 quotes

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children. — Mark Twain · 1894 There is no remedy for love but to love more. — Henry David Thoreau · 1839 No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. — Mark Twain · 1894 It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. — Samuel Butler (novelist) · 1902 The right sort of love is recognized by the sort of joy, of general excitement, of exultant life which the presence of someone produces in us and which distinguishes them. You feel better when with them. — Paul Valery

Nature6 quotes

Human subtlety... Will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519 In God's wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. — John Muir · 1890 It is a fine thing to be out on the hills alone. A man can hardly be a beast or a fool alone on a great mountain. — Francis Kilvert · 1871 All the wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light. — John Muir · 1869 There is always something spiritual about the approach of winter. You retire into your innermost chambers and camp near the small glow you find there. — Paul Klee This benign nature so provides that over all the world you find something to imitate. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519

Courage5 quotes

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — Reinhold Niebuhr · 1932 Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly: but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941 Refuse to be an accomplice. — Simone Weil · 1933 Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in a bed. — Charles Lindbergh · 1938

Life5 quotes

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anais Nin · 1941 The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires that we should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1847 To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. — Samuel Butler (novelist) · 1902 Remember that no man loses other life than that which he lives, nor lives other than that which he loses. — Marcus Aurelius · 180

Art4 quotes

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. — Eugene Delacroix · 1863 Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. — Georges Braque · 1952 Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519 This benign nature so provides that over all the world you find something to imitate. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519

Politics4 quotes

If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854 Refuse to be an accomplice. — Simone Weil · 1933 There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water. — Alan Clark · 1990 Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. — Albert Camus · 1962

Circle of life3 quotes

Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Man and animal are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1508

God and man3 quotes

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. — Soren Kierkegaard · 1838 The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts... His people were his temple, and he dwelt in them. — George Fox · 1646 The book of nature tells us distinctly that God cares not a rap for us—nor for any living creature. — Mark Twain · 1898

Inner life3 quotes

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings. — Henri-Frederic Amiel · 1883 Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1847

Morality3 quotes

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed. — Mark Twain · 1893 Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. — Mark Twain · 1896 If not becoming, don’t do it. If not true, don’t say it. Let these be your fixed principles. — Marcus Aurelius · 180

Painting3 quotes

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. — Eugene Delacroix · 1863 Perspective is the bridle and rudder of painting. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519 Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519

Self-improvement3 quotes

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Cultivate a well-ordered mind, it's your only road to happiness; and to reach it, be orderly in everything, even in the smallest details. — Eugene Delacroix · 1823 The only way to be new is constantly to change yourself, and the only way to be original is to increase, enlarge, deepen your own personality. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1949

Sex3 quotes

Electric flesh-arrows...traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. — Anais Nin · 1937 Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. — Anais Nin · 1941 Whom one gets into bed with is no light matter. — Paul Gauguin

Thinking for oneself3 quotes

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. — Mark Twain · 1904 The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings. — Henri-Frederic Amiel · 1883 I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1849

Writing3 quotes

Words, so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1848 A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition. — John Adams · 1760 A good writer seems to be writing about himself, (but never is,) but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself, & all things. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1867

Adventure2 quotes

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in a bed. — Charles Lindbergh · 1938 Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go. — James Cook · 1774

Aging2 quotes

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves. — George Orwell · 1949 It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1940

Alienation2 quotes

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also-He above all-is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended. — Henri-Frederic Amiel · 1849 Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. — John Muir · 1890

Beauty2 quotes

I believe that humor is a part of beauty. — Max Beckmann · 1903 The beautiful implies a combination of many different qualities. Strength alone, without elegance, etc., is not beauty. In a single word, the broadest definition would be harmony. — Eugene Delacroix · 1854

Being present2 quotes

With the Past as past I have nothing to do, nor with the Future as future. I live now. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1839 Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. — Henry David Thoreau · 1853

Democracy2 quotes

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. — Abraham Lincoln · 1858 After each war there is a little less democracy to save. — Brooks Atkinson · 1951

Early America2 quotes

Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. — William Bradford · 1620 But it pleased God to visit us then with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead. — William Bradford · 1621

Food2 quotes

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody. — Samuel Pepys · 1665 My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats. — James Boswell · 1773

Friendship2 quotes

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838 Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1864

God2 quotes

The book of nature tells us distinctly that God cares not a rap for us—nor for any living creature. — Mark Twain · 1898 Between "God exists" and "There is no God" lies a whole enormous field which a true sage has great difficulty in crossing. But a Russian knows only one of these two extremes and the middle between them doesn't interest him, which is why he knows nothing or very little... A good man's indifference is as good as any religion. — Anton Chekhov · 1921

Heaven2 quotes

On Earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it. — Jules Renard · 1896 If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found the flower in his hand when he awoke-Aye! and what then? — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1816

Human nature2 quotes

It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals. They seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. — Anne Frank · 1944 If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854

Inner strength2 quotes

Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly: but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest. — Marcus Aurelius · 180 Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. — Marcus Aurelius · 180

Interconnectedness of all people2 quotes

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof!...In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make—leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents, or piled stone—we all dwell in a house of one room—the world with the firmament for its roof—and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. — John Muir · 1890 Mankind have been created for the sake of one another. — Marcus Aurelius · 180