"It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics."

Hemingway, Ernest on brevity   

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole book."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on brevity
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"If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams -- the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."

Southey, Robert on brevity   

"A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph."

Allen, James on purpose
4 fans of this quote   

"Never be afraid to treat the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else's footsteps."

Bellin, Gita on purpose
10 fans of this quote   

"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it."

Buddha on purpose
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"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."

Howard, Jane on family
5 fans of this quote   

"Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on difficulties
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"Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on endurance
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"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on forgiveness
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"Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on illusion
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"The secret anniversaries of the heart."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on anniversaries   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on love
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"It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on passion
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"It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on progress   

"Write on your doors the saying wise and old. Be bold! and everywhere -- Be bold; Be not too bold! Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less sustaineth him and the steadiness of his mind beareth him out."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on courage   

"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self -- a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change -- the willful act of making the change, doing something."

Buscaglia, Leo on change
52 fans of this quote   

"Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name."

Meynell, Alice on travel   

"There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness -- her selfishness, in short -- is a reproach to the American way of life."

Jong, Erica on women   

"If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust."

Chesterfield, Lord on intimacy   

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Gandhi, Mahatma on happiness
52 fans of this quote   

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

Gandhi, Mahatma on forgiveness
71 fans of this quote   

"Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad."

Conrad, Joseph on loneliness
10 fans of this quote   

"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."

Allen, James on dream
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"If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

Proust, Marcel on dream
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"Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams."

Alcott, Amos Bronson on dream
4 fans of this quote   

"Often the test of courage is not to die but to live."

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di on courage
12 fans of this quote   

"It is easy to fly into a passion... anybody can do that, but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time and in the right way that is not easy."

Aristotle on courage
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"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance."

Barton, Bruce on courage
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"The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire -- the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale"

Blavatsky, Helena Petrova on courage
3 fans of this quote   

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on courage
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"The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on courage
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"Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed."

Carnegie, Dale on courage
13 fans of this quote   

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

Redmoon, Ambrose on courage
8 fans of this quote   

"I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence."

Rostand, Jean on understanding   

"Man know much more than he understands."

Adler, Alfred on understanding
4 fans of this quote   

"To understand is to perceive patterns."

Berlin, Sir Isaiah on understanding
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"If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday."

Buck, Pearl S. on understanding
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"The key to why things change is the key to everything."

Burke, James E. on understanding
5 fans of this quote   

"No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy."

Carlyle, Thomas on understanding
3 fans of this quote