John Sterling (author) Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

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

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

John Sterling
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.

John Sterling
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.

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

John Sterling
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.

John Sterling
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.

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

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

John Sterling
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.

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

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

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

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

John Sterling