Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the World, for attraction. The qualities which are the most attractive before dinner sometimes become the least so in the evening. Games prevent honest, intimate, and open relationships between the players. Yet people play them because they fill up time, provoke attention, reinforce early opinions about self and others, and fulfill a sense of destiny.

A person is worthwhile because they are human. One does not have to earn that worth. If an individual does not measure up to his or her ideal self, that person may develop extreme feelings of inferiority, perhaps even an inferiority complex, a sense of complete worthless that lasts for their whole life. Both inferiority feelings and the feeling that you are competent to deal with the World take a long time and much practice to develop.

Benevolence is the duty of one who aspires to wisdom. It is wonderful and delightful to think how long a good man’s beneficence may be potent, even after his enlightenment. Few people are so perfect as not to err sometimes; and if you are convinced of your errors, you will be more cautious how you give way to them a second time.

First of all things in the World a man must be a man, with all the grace and vigor and, if possible, all the beauty of the body. Then he must be a gentleman, with all the grace, the vigor, the good taste of the mind. And then with both of these, no matter what his creed, his dogmas, his superstitions, his religion, with both of these he must try to live a beautiful life of their spirit.

He is just what a young man ought to be, sensible, good humored, lively; and I never saw such happy manners, so much ease, with such perfect breeding! He is also handsome, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

Affectation of candor is common enough, one meets it everywhere. However, to be candid without ostentation or design, to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad, belongs to you alone. We seldom appear considerable to others when we appear of no consequence to ourselves. There is a higher sort of bravery, the bravery of self-control.

Men are endowed with every gradation of course, from the calm energy of reflection, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit; from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable, as there is greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful and ill directed energies of despair.

Courage is a virtue; passion is a vice; passion, therefore, cannot be courage. It seems to me that if we are going to live sanely, then we must respect and be sensitive to differences, realizing that no two individuals are alike, and that if we really understand someone, we understand how he or she differs from us.

The youthful heart is ready to believe that what it wishes will happen. Alas, how doubly sharp does this readiness render the barb of disappointment. These birds which tell us news are seldom very credible, and are often not very creditable. You must take a bird’s word for what it may be worth. Fortune is a tender parent, and often doth more for her favorite offspring than either they deserve or wish.

All of us make an occasional attempt to realize a dream. In our computer oriented, information valuing society, emotions and emotional people are often ridiculed. It is usually not a compliment when one is described as being emotional. Being valuing beings, we learn to consider some emotions as good and others undesirable. As a little child, it was instilled into me to be silent and reticent. This was one of the most important traits to form in the character of a young man.

However, I entertain the hope that in our venturing we shall get addicted to wonder and know the joy of constantly feeling something a little new. Grief can take care of itself, but to get full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. Pleasure, joy, and happiness all involve a sense of well-being, a sense of being up, and having good feelings toward yourself and others.

Nonetheless, some individuals are convinced that life must be painful. They resent any good feelings in themselves or others. Joy seems somehow irresponsible to them. Yet, the price we pay for avoiding the pain of being fully alive is that we are excluded from the pleasure as well. The way to love other people is to express what we feel, anger and love, without aiming to hurt feelings. Open but reverent communication is how to make love in our lives.

The whole crusade for control of the emotions is, of course, emotionally grounded, and it is prosecuted in a most emotional fashion. Sometimes it is necessary to control strong emotions, as least temporarily. Perhaps it is the instinctive trait of most of us to seek an explanation for any great happiness as we are always prone to discuss the causes of our adversity.

Imagination may form fine pictures of felicity from an indulgence in every wish; but, so blind are mankind to their own happiness, that it is oftener to the gratification than to the disappointment of their misery owing. Of all things in this World, more dominion, or the empire over ourselves, is not only the most glorious, as reason is the superior nature of man, but the most valuable, in respect of real human pleasure.

Self-approbation is the highest honor, and the highest happiness, of a reasonable being. Money can give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. However, true happiness can be found only in congruity, and what is natural. The best of happiness is mine, the power and the will to be useful.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and the feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. Our friendships and intimacies are only calculated for strong life and health. You cannot see my eyes, they do not see you. Hear me when I say they do not mind at all. The prettiest are always further.

It is the rain that I hear coming, not a stranger or a ghost, it is the quiet of the storm approaching that I fear the most. It is that pain that I hear coming, the slightest crystal tear and drops to the ground in silence, when my love is near. When waters engulf us we reach for a star.

Darling, when did you fall? When was it over? It is marching through my door now, the stoney cold of lonesome. A bell tolls for my heart and now my lonesome song begins. Darling, when did you call? I could not here you. Darling, when…when did you cry? I could not hear you. I supposed it is the price of falling in love. He that looks for a star puts out his candles.

Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our power to attaint it. There is noting that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.

The man who has many gratifications is apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untired. So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know of! Art is her soul’s husband. A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility may, at any time, be a man of affairs if he will only choose to give himself trouble.

Keep good people in company, and you shall be of their number. An honest hearts is not always to be trusted with itself in bad company. Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. Fire cannot be forced downward, nor can true love. He that attempts the impossible will often achieve the extremely difficult. If eagles gaze at the Sun, may not men and women at the gods?

To scale great heights, we must come out of the lowermost depths. The way to Heaven is through hell. Life only becomes wrong when it ceases to aspire. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the World, for attraction. It is always a mystery what people see in each other.

I am in the dark, I am underwater searching for a teardrop in the water. I can feel your shadow over me, I can hear your whisper in my ear. The ocean is bleeding, it is taking me down. I am falling, you are watching me fall. I am watching as your body is falling deeper.

You are looking for a teardrop, here it is. I remember the way you used to dance. Then I remember that you will never dance again. Now you are fallen, I am falling with you; and with us, our blood, our love. Our heartbeats used to move in time, they have slowed down, left us being. This is the story of a fallen love.

His great charm was attentiveness. Experience had not yet taken away that freshness of the spirit which is the charm of the body. I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when I looked at it the right way, did not become still more complicated. I know that you believe you understand what you think I said. However, I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Most of the concepts we use in thinking involve words. Word is a symbol that we agree will represent a concept or an idea. However, we must agree on the same meaning for a given word. Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make more clear. Nature’s laws affirm instead of prohibiting. If you violate her laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hang man.

The machine society, especially through it exploding mass civilization, has confused people’s sense of reality and personal identity. There is a confused blur between mass media, news, drama, and live experience. Existence has increasingly become a spectator sport. Tragedy may be your choice, but it will certainly appear that comedy chooses you. However, what were the glories of the Sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?

Much more does affliction demand our love when it proceeds from compassion for another’s woes. To take a thorn out of one’s friend’s foot, to put it into one’s own. Praise when closed with an exception, has been found the most successful means of blasting the credit of the most deserving. Let your actions praise you. A charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the charmer that it may succeed.

I find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over educated. Really beautiful things cannot go out. We are all equal in beauty, there would be no beauty, for beauty is only by comparison. There is no way of joining the past with the present, and there is no difference between what is a moment past and what is eternally past.

Passions expands a man’s mind like double up. He grows as big as himself. His hair rises on his head, and his chest heaves. Will rules give a man passion? Will a man that feels stand in need of rules? In the voyage of life, passion is the tempest, love the gentle gale. No misery can equal the struggles of a virtuous mind wishing to act in a manner becoming its own dignity, yet carried by the passions to do otherwise, this is the poetry of passion.

Passion seemed to be much discontented but Patience was very quiet. Our passions are but loose casuists, and what is worse, our reason is often too bribed over to their side; in which case we fall like a client sold by his attorney, or a prince murdered by his guards. Passions are unconsequential. Violet passions seldom last long, and those of their subject least of any.

That sweet fury, that rage of active delight which crowns the enjoyments of a mutual love passion is to inspire so serious as lust, it is my destiny. When guilty passion is let loose, who shall name its boundaries? Is not guilty passion as the flame, or the torrent? Passion seemed not only to do wrong and violence to the memory of the dead, but to be infected by death, and to droop and decline beside it. All the living knaves and liars in the World were nothing to the honesty and truth of one true friend.

There is no such passions in human nature as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen. This majesty of passion is possessed by nearly every man once in his life, but it usually an attribute of youth and conduces to the first successful mating. The first passion may me but the enthusiasm of discover. Our passions do not like apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

There were passions at war in Ryan to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only. Of all passions there is not against which we should so strongly fortify ourselves as love. Passions operate differently on the human mind, as hardship on the body, in proportion to the strength or weakness, soundness or pain, of one and the other.

The little god passion lay lurking in his heart, though anger and disdain so hoodwinked him, that he could not see them. Passions, the managers and directors of the theatre of Nature, as no smoke ariseth where no coal is kindled, so without cause of affection the passion is easy to be cured. What has passion to do with knowledge?

The corpses of those antiquated fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come together as in resurrection. Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful passion, at another person’s expense. How icy cold is the heart, when the devour, the wild ecstasy of passion, has faded away, and sunk down among the dead ashes of the fire that blazed so fiercely, and was fed by the very substance of its life!

The music, the painting, the poetry of the passions, is the property of everyone who has heart to be moved. If passion is to invade, surely science must evacuate. Passion has the sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air. The tenacity of true passion is terrible. It will stand against the hosts of Heaven, the Universe’s great array of facts, rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb, sent to the lowest pit.

Honest passions has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. Passion thinks willfully when it thinks at all. In France, passion is a virtue.  In order to have a due command of our passions, it is necessary to subject them to early obedience. Passion, in its undue influence, produces weakness as well as injustice.

A person who has any over ruling passion will compound by giving up twenty secondary or under satisfactions, though more laudable ones, in order to have that gratified. My predominant passion is love, not gold. Many are never angry at bottom for being disobeyed through excess of love. They like an uncontrollable passion. Ill will and passion are dreadful misrepresenters.

Some one passion predominating in every human breast breaks through principle and controls us all. Is not passion a universally allowed extenuator of violence? A rake in passion is not a rake in love. When a person can rave, the passion is not dangerous. The passions are intended for our servants, not our masters, and we have, within us, a power of controlling them, which it is the duty and the business of our lives to exert.

Passion has eyes, as far seeing in the dark as love’s. How little do they know human nature who think they and say to passion so far shalt thou go, and no further! The language of passion is almost always pure as well as vehement. It is better that a man should be the servant of a kind master than the slave of his own wild passion.

Passions yield at length to Reason’s strokes. Passion acts upon the human mind in a ratio compounded of the acuteness of sense and constitutional heat. When a man gives himself up to the government of ruling passion, or, in other words, when his hobby horse grows headstrong, farewell cool reason and fair discretion! There is no passion so serious as lust. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.