John Sterling Quotes

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.

Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.

Colors answer feeling in man; shapes answer thought; and motion answers will.

One dupe is as impossible as one twin.

The worst education which teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that.

Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastic, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter.

Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.

Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion.

A man without earnestness is a mournful and perplexing spectacle. But it is a consolation to believe, as we must of such a one, that he is the most effectual and compulsive of all schools.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.

Color, in the outward world, answers to feeling in man; shape, to thought; motion, to will. The dawn of day is the nearest outward likeness of an act of creation; and it is, therefore, also the closest type in nature for that in us which most approaches to creation--the realization of an idea by an act of the will.

Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords.

Modern education too often covers the fingers with rings, and at the same time cuts the sinews at the wrist.

You just cant predict baseball

Compliments are only lies in court clothes.

Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.

Every man's follies are the caricature resemblances of his wisdom.

Be busy in trading, receiving, and giving, for life is too good to be wasted in living.

There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.

Speech is as a pump, by which we raise and pour out the water from the great lake of Thought,--whither it flows back again.

The ideal client is the very wealthy man in very great trouble.

Commerce has made all winds her mistress.

Poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage.

Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.

I could honor Carmen Electra. I think she's beautiful.

Toil, feel, think, hope; you will be sure to dream enough before you die, without arranging for it.

An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

Every fancy that we would substitute for a reality is, if we saw aright, and saw the whole, not only false, but every way less beautiful and excellent than that which we sacrifice to it.

Like earth, awake, and warm, and bright With joy the spirit moves and burns; So up to thee! O Fount of Light! Our light returns.