Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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.
Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.
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 wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.
Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
The prosaic man sees things badly, or with the bodily sense; but the poet sees them clad in beauty, with the spiritual sense.
I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.
Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him.
I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
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 am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.
We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.
In my walks, I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.
It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.
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.
Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire.
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.
Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.