He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your’re the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it–else it is none.
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, ‘Thou must,’ The youth whispers, ‘I can.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.
Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
If the single man plants himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abides, this huge world will come around to him.
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.
The South-wind bringsLife, sunshine and desire,And on every mount and meadowBreathes aromatic fire;But over the dead he has no power,The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;And, looking over the hills, I mournThe darling who shall not return.
Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale ’til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.
Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams
All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.
There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.
Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.
The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.
Your goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none.
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.
There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
Spiritual force is stronger than material force thoughts rule the world.
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.
When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, —”He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?
Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!
Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul
The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.
Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it
If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature…. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
We are immensed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.
We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use.
Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
Never miss an opportunity of noticing anything of beauty …
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character.
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.
Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.
The student is to read history actively not passively.
People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
She shows us only surfaces but Nature is a million fathoms deep.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same
Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?
Over the inter glaciers,I see the summer glow,And, through the wild-piled snowdrift,The warm rosebuds below.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.
Does not… the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound?
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Don’t trust children with edge tools. Don’t trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!
Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear!
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it
Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.
Line in nature is not found;Unit and universe are round;In vain produced, all rays return;Evil will bless, and ice will burn.
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.
As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
To laugh often and much;to win the respect of intelligent peopleand the affection of children,to leave the world a better place,to know even one life has breathed easierbecause you have lived,this is to have succeeded.
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
The years teach us much, which the days never knew.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst…They are for nothing but to inspire.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
A friend may be nature’s most magnificent creation.
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.
He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough
We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent we have discovered afterward that much was accomplished and much was begun in us.
Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?
The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.
Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss.
Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, ‘Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold
The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
For each new morning with its light,For rest and shelter of the night,For health and food, for love and friends,For everything Thy goodness sends.
No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.
PoetTo mask the fiery thought,in simple words succeeds.For still the craft of genius is,To mask a king in weeds
Good bye, proud world! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine
I know too well how slowly we edge along sideways to every thing good & brilliant in our lives & how casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible
Yes, but does Maine have anything to SAY to Florida?
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it. –
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when all your arrows are spent.
You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel.
Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.
Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.
Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.
As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.
The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.
Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule.
Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant
True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer.
We are always getting ready to live, but never living.
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
There is a difference between truly listening and waiting for your turn to talk.
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well half an hour?
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.
The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.
Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.
It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.
The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.
The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
People wish to be settled only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat men to whom a crises which intimidates and paralyzes the majority comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!
When a man is pushed tormented defeated he has a chance to learn something he has been put on his wits … he has gained facts learned his ignorance is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.
Pain indolence sterility endless ennui have also their lesson for you.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. Christian Bovee A little praise Goes a great ways.
When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless.
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not.
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its ends.
Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we will not find it.
Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it no excess of explanation and it is full of suggestions the raw material of possible poems and histories.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
We look wishfully to emergencies to eventful revolutionary times … and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads.
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring they carry them as silently away.
Good breeding a union of kindness and independence.
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
We think our civilization near its meridian but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
If you would lift me you must be on a higher ground.
An institution is the lengthening shadow of one man.
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
We are reformers in spring and summer in autumn and winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night. Reform is affirmative conservatism negative conservatism goes for comfort reform for truth.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Whatever you do you need courage. … To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.
Do not be too timid and squeamish. … All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Every man has his own courage and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.
For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail?
I wish to say what I think and feel today with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. … Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradicts everything you said today.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
The question is whether suicide is the way out or the way in.
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!
Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.
As a man thinketh so is he and as a man chooseth so is he.
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both.
We do not live an equal life but one of contrasts and patchwork now a little joy then a sorrow now a sin then a generous or brave action.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust So near is God to man. When Duty whispers low Thou must The youth replies I can.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
The things taught in schools are not an education but the means of an education.
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance that imitation is suicide that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion.
The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education but the means of education.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes.
Passion though a bad regulator is a powerful spring.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Vigor is contagious and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
If a man has good corn or wood or boards or pigs to sell or can make better chairs or knives crucibles or church organs than anybody else you will find a broad hardbeaten road to his house though it be in the woods.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.
The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
A believer a mind whose faith is consciousness is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.
The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith.
AH I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are … punished by fear.
When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world I thank God I am alive.
For everything you have missed you have gained something else.
Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
His heart was as great as the world but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
We take care of our health we lay up money we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all-friends.
No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it he must serve it too.
The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.
The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Go oft to the house of thy friend for weeds choke the unused path.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
Play out the game act well your part and if the gods have blundered we will not.
To believe your own thought to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe can we not take the leap?
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you the society of your contemporaries the connection of events.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood or exaggeration in it.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
In nature nothing can be given all things are sold.
The meaning of good and bad of better and worse is simply helping or hurting.
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactor.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.
Discontent is want of self-reliance it is infirmity of will.
Five great enemies to peace inhabit us: avarice ambition envy anger and pride. If those enemies were to be banished we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
To fill the hour and leave no crevice … that is happiness.
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Right Now Is the Time to Be Kind You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how soon it will be too late.
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
A man finds room in a few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors for the expression of all his history and his wants.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is brave five minutes longer.
All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.
Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.
The cultivated man wise to know and bold to perform is the end to which nature works.
We fancy men are individuals so are pumpkins but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.
Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist.
The louder he talked of his honour the faster we counted our spoons.
A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances 100 things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom!
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
Extremes meet and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.
Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.
If I cannot brag of knowing something then I brag of not knowing it at any rate brag.
Every man is a borrower and a mimic life is theatrical and literature a quotation.
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self?
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Trust the instinct to the end though you can render no reason.
You have first an instinct then an opinion then a knowledge as the plant has root bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end though you can render no reason.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening only with his legs.
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
His heart was as great as the world but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.
I can find my biography in every fable that I read.
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man having once shown himself capable of original writing is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.
Shallow men believe in luck wise and strong men in cause and effect.
Work and acquire and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.
Is not marriage an open question when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out and such as are out wish to get in.
A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.
Shall we judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By the minority surely.
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.
God had infinite time to give us…. He cut it up into a near succession of new mornings and with each therefore a new idea new inventions and new applications.
Poverty Frost Famine Rain Disease are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.
Nature is reckless of the individual. When she has points to carry she carries them
When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world I thank God I am alive.
Nature is too thin a screen the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.
To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is brave five minutes longer.
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
My evening visitors if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.
The difference between landscape and landscape is small but there’s a great difference in the beholders.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness whether it be to make baskets or broadswords or canals or statues or songs.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring they carry them as silently away.
He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king rich man fairy or demon who possesses such power as that.
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
To fill the hour that is happiness to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.
There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich who want something more that of the sick who want something different and that of the traveler who says “Anywhere but here.”
Men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions.
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions.
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self?
The peace of the man who has foresworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace but a canting impotence.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter compared to what lies within us.
The power which resides in man is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he until he has tried.
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity but in being uninteresting.
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors Landor replies “Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.”
Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.
There is always a best way of doing everything if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics for then we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
The soul contains the event that shall befall it for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force that thoughts rule the world.
As a man thinketh so is he and as a man chooseth so is he.
A man is a method a progressive arrangement a selecting principle gathering his like unto him wherever he goes. What you are comes to you.
Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.
Though I am weak yet God when prayed Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit and not give the bread of life.
Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.
We are reformers in Spring and Summer in Autumn and Winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.
The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that if you let it alone it will let you alone.
Every reform was once a private opinion and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.
Ah if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.
Do not be too timid and squeamish. … All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances a hundred things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom!
Sanity is very rare every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
I pay the School Master but ’tis the school boys that educate my son.
Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago but it is put to better use.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.
It is doubtless a vice to turn one’s eyes inward too much but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
Discontent is want of self-discipline it is infirmity of will.
It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.
Nothing is more simple than greatness indeed to be simple is to be great.
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself around your own.
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
There are some men above grief and some men below it.
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict everything you said today.
Excite the soul and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear the world itself loses its solidity nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Whatever you do you need courage. … To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruit of his character.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead.
A man builds a fine house and now he has a master and a task for life is to furnish watch show it and keep it in repair the rest of his life.
This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?
The present is an edifice which God cannot rebuild.
This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
With the past I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now.
We can see well into the past we can guess shrewdly in to the future but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Live wastes itself while we are preparing to live.
To finish the moment to find the journey’s end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby – so helpless and ridiculous.
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.
O Lord! Unhappy is the man whom man can make unhappy.
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April’s breeze unfurl’d Here once the embattl’d farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.
A wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interests than it is theirs to find his weak point.
A woman’s strength is the irresistible might of weakness.
Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate whose faithful work will answer for him.
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Good-bye proud world! I’m going home Thou are not my friend I am not thine.
What torments of grief you endured from evils that never arrived.
Some of your hurts you have cured And the sharpest you still have survived But what torments of grief you endured From the evil which never arrived.
And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.
Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron.
We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.
It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance.
Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.
The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.
There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world.
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.