Secret Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

To produce things and to rear them,
To produce, but not to take possession of them,
To act, but not to rely on one's own ability,
To lead them, but not to master them —
This is called profound and secret virtue.

Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.

G. K. Chesterton

To one who reads the spirit of the Gita, it teaches the secret of nonviolence, the secret of realizing self through the physical body.

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life.

Of all things I liked books best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading. He did not permit it and would fly in a rage when he caught me in the act. He hid the candles when he found that I was reading in secret. He did not want me to spoil my eyes. But I obtained tallow, made the wicking and cast the sticks into tin forms, and every night I would bush the keyhole and the cracks and read, often till dawn.
Chapter 2 : Extraordinary Experiences

We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in Art.

We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.

Henry David Thoreau

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Leonardo da Vinci

The painter goes through states of fullness and evacuation. That is the whole secret of art. I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau. I get 'green' indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions. People seize on painting to cover up their nakedness. They get what they can wherever they can. In the end I don't believe they get anything at all. They've simply cut a coat to the measure of their own ignorance. They make everything, from God to a picture, in their own image. That is why the picture-hook is the ruination of a painting.

In this House on July 24, 1895 the
Secret of Dreams was revealed to
Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess

In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity; and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort; as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.

Henry David Thoreau

Creativeness, like the Freedom of the will, contains a secret.

In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it.

Charles Dickens

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life. This is the truth which I have learned from the teachings of the Nazarene.

This is no dream; it is the universal law of Nature. But how to extract from science the secret of this universal law?

The sciences, which have revealed so many secrets and destroyed so many prejudices, are destined to render us yet greater service. New truths, new discoveries will unveil secrets still more essential to the happiness of men — but only if we give our esteem to the scientists and our protection to the sciences.

Napoleon I of France

Who shall doubt "the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid" Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several million?

Rudyard Kipling

My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.

Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.

The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

George Bernard Shaw

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.