Doe Quotes - Page 347

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.

If Americans were attacked, it does change the equation. The problem is, is that with regard to this is there've been horrendous killings of civilians with conventional weapons.

America does not need to continue to have regime change throughout the world, nation-building.

There's a sense of urgency that the president does not possess, that there is a 9/11 in the making.

Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant?

He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.

Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.

The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.

The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not.

He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.

Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declares all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.

If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.

Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.

We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.

Necessity does everything well.

No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.

God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful or great, but He does intend us all to be friends.

When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him.

It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in.

The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience.

The life of labor does not make men, but drudges.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.