Echoes

Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.

Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. ... Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.

Who dainties love shall beggars prove.

He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. (15)

If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

For in all adversity of fortune, the most unfortunate kind of misfortune is to have been happy.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.