Lew Wallace Quotes

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

All calculations based on experience elsewhere, fail in New Mexico.

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others.

It is more beautiful to trust in God. The beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he loves me.

A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good fortune.

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins: it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God; the purest wisdom is knowledge of God.

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.

I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not.

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.

It is never wise to slip the bands of discipline.

When people are lonely they stoop to any companionship.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.