Quote

With the civilized person contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave they are forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained.

William Matthews

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Matthews
Better
Longing
Something
Myth
Indefinable
Object
Cradle
Strive
Striving
Objects
Contentment
Forever
Grave
Persons
Civilized
Person
Graves

More quotes by William Matthews

Image
Be methodical if you would succeed in business, or in anything. Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all its bearings and details, its principles, instruments and applications. Method is essential if you would get through your work easily and with economy of time.
William Matthews
Image
The fullest instruction, and the fullest enjoyment are never derived from books, till we have ventilated the ideas thus obtained in free and easy chat with others.
William Matthews
Image
The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.
William Matthews
Image
The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles... are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance.
William Matthews
Image
What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?
William Matthews
Image
The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, it sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to the purpose.
William Matthews
Image
Go to the desk. Stay at the desk. Thrive at the desk.
William Matthews
Image
The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic.
William Matthews
Image
It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn't dull, but the quality of attention that we do or do not pay to it. Dull subjects are those we have failed.
William Matthews
Image
The power of music that poetry lacks is the ability to persuade without argument.
William Matthews
Image
There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes arid feelings.
William Matthews
Image
Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous.
William Matthews
Image
God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of coercion.
William Matthews
Image
One wellcultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth 100 shallow faculties. The first law of success in this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, is concentration-to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
William Matthews
Image
Talking, is a digestive process which is absolutely essential to the mental constitution of the man who devours many books.
William Matthews
Image
As frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation of fire, so any good quality, overwrought and pushed to excess, turns into its own contrary.
William Matthews
Image
One well-cultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth one hundred shallow faculties.
William Matthews
Image
We all have two childhoods, the unhappy one and the happy one.
William Matthews
Image
Strive for excellence in your calling, but as a subsidiary to this: Do not fail to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not a dwarf in your profession, you must always be growing. The man that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down.
William Matthews
Image
Criminals are opportunists. If you've got a booming market, they're going to get away with more fraud.
William Matthews