Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.
The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.
It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.
For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.
Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children-- these are the only investments that never fail.
Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.
The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
That we have but little faith is not sad, but that we have little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned.
Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.
I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.
As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence.
I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.
When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.
Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.
The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.
Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.
You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not.
Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.