Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.
Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.
What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.
The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
I know very well what Goethe meant when he said that he never had a chagrin but he made a poem out of it. I have altogether too much patience of this kind.
Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.
As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life; I mean that I had some.
For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.
There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.
We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.
So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?
As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.
Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believesin its inconceivable purity.
Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world, while he lives.
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
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.
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?
Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.
One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.
How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off.
Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light which itis destined to receive thence.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].
Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.
Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
I delight to come to my bearings,... not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sitthoughtfully while it goes by.
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food
There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews, and not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the memory of its freshness to midday.
The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,Mthat was what distinguished him.
Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.