Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow’s dark array, – Days of absence, I am weary; She I love is far away.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

Absence - that common cure of love.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

White... is not a mere absence of colour, it is a shining and affirmative thing as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours, but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, and daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Absence from whom we love is worse than death and frustrates hope severer than despair.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery of his passions.

Man is a credulous animal and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Never find fault with the absent.

The people who are absent are the ideal, those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Knowledge is recognition of something absent, it is a salutation, not an embrace.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love aren't you already there?

Whatever work we do, whatever sacrifices we perform, they are not of much use in the absence of love.

You'll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea.

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.

Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.

Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

Though the dungeon, the scourge and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

Truth has to persist unaffected in the past, present and future. That, which is absent in two states, how can it be true?

Your progress is reflected back as Grace, your decline is reflected back as its absence. The mirror just reflects. It has no partiality or prejudice.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

I dote on his very absence.

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on, that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man that, though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.

In the absence of sound oversight, responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restrictions on activities that might harm the environment, or take advantage of middle-class families, or threaten to bring down the entire financial system.