Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.
I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?
The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.
There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him.
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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.
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!
And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here.
That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love.
The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.
I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.
Faint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.
I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream.
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.