Wisdom & life lessons

All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.

This above all: to thine own self be true;And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.

How far that little candle throws his beams!So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Till this moment, I never knew myself.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Things do not change; we change.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

Work is love made visible.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Where you tend a rose, my lad,A thistle cannot grow.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain;If I can ease one life the aching,Or cool one pain,Or help one fainting robinUnto his nest again,I shall not live in vain.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:For the apparel oft proclaims the man;And they in France of the best rank and stationAre of a most select and generous chief in that.Neither a borrower nor a lender be:For loan oft loses both itself and friend;And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to dancing and dress.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till to-morrow what you can do today.