I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear.
Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.
Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest – lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.
Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
It is not enough to be busy so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
Men say they know many things;But lo! they have taken wings, —The arts and sciences,And a thousand appliances;The wind that blowsIs all that any body knows
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out ’twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them
In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.
…is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.”- Henry David Thoreau
I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar
The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day.
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors.
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
We have the St. Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.
See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds.
Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.
There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of ‘expediency.’ There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals, the only sliders are backsliders.
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?
Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony.
The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.
The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.
Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.
Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.
The fate of the country… does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.
The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.
The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.
It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.
Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven
We are more of the earth,Farther from heaven these days.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Now-a-days, men wear a fool’s cap, and call it a liberty cap.
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.
As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it would seem that I cannot bear so much society as you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough of it this year I shall cry all the next.
A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.
Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…Simplify, simplify!
that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it shor
Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulders…
Thu luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.
Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
It is not enought to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?
They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with gods themselves, in view of their grotesque, half-finished creatures.
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exlcude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed
Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.
It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. … A man sees only what concerns him.
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read the.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.
Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.
As for Doing-good…I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.
Philanthropy is. . . greatly overrated. A pain in the gut is not sympathy for the underprivileged, but the result of eating a green apple; the philanthropist gives to ease his own pain.
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, ‘I will simply be.
Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.
A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.
The frontiers are not east or west north or south but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Whate’er we leave to God God does and blesses us.
Simplicity simplicity simplicity. I say let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.
When I hear music I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.
I think that there is nothing not even crime more opposed to poetry to philosophy ay to life itself than this incessant business.
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is in fact a subtle detraction.
However mean your life is meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
The frontiers are not east or west north or south but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Where there is a brave man in the thickest of the fight there is the post of honor.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong as when you find a trout in the milk.
Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
Friends will not only live in harmony but in melody.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.
However mean your life is meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in Paradise. Love your life.
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
There is not so good an understanding between any two but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Not only must we be good but we must also be good for something.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore though they should fall immediately they had better aim at something high.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
It’s only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.
If I knew … that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I should run for my life.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbours.
To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know that is true knowledge.
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch or an old acquaintance among the pines.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully though I never received one cent for it.
When I would recreate myself I seek the darkest wood the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place – a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength the marrow of Nature.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Gnaw your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it gnaw it still.
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may Old time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it and gnaw it still.
Colour which is the poet’s wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
Politics is the gizzard of society full of gut and gravel.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
What a man thinks of himself that is what determines or rather indicates his fate.
Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison.
The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
Read the best books first or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Misfortunes occur only when a man is false…. Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
What a man thinks of himself that is what determines or rather indicates his fate.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
This life is not for complaint but for satisfaction.
Simplicity simplicity simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand. … Simplify simplify.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rain-storms and did my duty faithfully.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imaged he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
Where there is a brave man in the thickest of the fight there is the post of honor.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
City life – millions of people being lonesome together.
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear.
Between whom there is hearty truth there is love.
It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear.
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
We like that a sentence should read as if its author had he held a plough instead of a pen could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
As for style of writing if one has anything to say it drops from him simply and directly as a stone falls to the ground.
The youth gets together this material to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on earth and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
There is one consolation in being sick and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.