“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”
Variant: The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.
Source: Everything Is Illuminated
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.
Context: : These have often been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but also to Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and many others; Lord Denning in The Road to Justice (1988) states that the phrase originated in a statement of Irish orator John Philpot Curran in 1790: "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
“The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 368.
Source: (1974), Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 230
Dichoso el árbol, que es apenas sensitivo,
y más la piedra dura porque esa ya no siente,
pues no hay dolor más grande que el dolor de ser vivo,
ni mayor pesadumbre que la vida consciente.
Cantos de vida y esperanza (1901), "Lo fatal" ("Fatalism")
Quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 305.
