Quotes About Balance

A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is, and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if there's time for both.

The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life.

To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that's what I call success.

After all, marriage is marriage, and money's money—both useful things in their way ...

the stoic's carelessness of material things, combined with the epicurean's pleasure in them.

You like so much to be alone? Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely. She

He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts into her life.

Passion, the artist implied, would have been the dominant note of his life, had it not been held in check by a sentiment of exalted chivalry, and by the sense that a nature of such emotional intensity as his must always be ridden on the curb.

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm is one of the most inveterate of human instincts." -The Decoration of Houses

The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.

As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.

Those who attempt to level, never equalize.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, and combing mind.

In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.

I know there is an order that keeps things fast in their place: it is made to us, and we are made to it. Why not ask another wife, other children, another body, another mind?

I wished to warn the people against the greatest of all evils,—a blind and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform.

The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

The greatest statesmen are those able at once to preserve and reform.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.