1890

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The Principles of Psychology · 1890

★ 5.4

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar... Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one. What treaty that the whites ever made with us red men have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set in their lands. They sent 10,000 horsemen to battle. Where are the warriors to-day? Who slew them? Where are our lands ? Who owns them ? What white man can say I ever stole his lands or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever when a captive insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and gone unfed ? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children ? What law have I broken ? Is it wrong for me to love my own ? Is it wicked in me because my skin is red ; because I am a Sioux ; because I was born where my fathers lived ; because I would die for my people and my country ?

The Principles of Psychology · 1890

★ 5.3

Sitting Bull

1890

★ 5.3

Personal journal

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

★ 5.2

Some people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are. They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses.

It is cocaine...a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?

The Principles of Psychology · 1890

★ 5.2

Novel · Magazine · Detective fiction

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four · 1890

★ 4.5

Genius lasts longer than Beauty.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.9

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.9

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.9

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.8

There is always something ridiculous about the passions of people whom one has ceased to love.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.8

Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.8

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes.

Four things greater than all things are,— Women and Horses and Power and War.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 3.8

Poem

Rudyard Kipling

1890

★ 3.7

Habit is... The enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.

I am not arguing with you-I am telling you.

The Principles of Psychology · 1890

★ 3.7

James McNeill Whistler

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies · 1890

★ 3.6

Personal journal

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.

John Muir

1890

★ 3.6

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" or a "stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.