Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own.
Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.
The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time. They are majestically dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey web.
I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.
The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows whither.
The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by theopulent, can be enjoyed by all.
The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature.
For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring orrather terminating my own soul.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.
Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.
Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 'tis not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much.
Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear.
The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self.
In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole.
The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.
History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do.
The age of puberty is a crisis in the age of man worth studying. It is the passage from the unconscious to the conscious; from thesleep of passions to their rage.
There are days when the great are near us, when there is no frown on their brow, no condescension even; when they take us by the hand, and we share their thought.
The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself.
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. . Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.
Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of Nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.
People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.
The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anewÂ… it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.
Begin and proceed on a settled conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.
You take a weakness and start making it stronger.. You don't have to build your strengths - that you already possess... It is your weakness that needs the exercise
God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in strictness and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point at original energy.
If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man.
The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired 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.
But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed,through which the creator passes.
The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.
The escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love of what is simple and beautiful; independence, and cheerful relation, these are the essentials.
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him.
The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add.
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.
As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.
If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.
A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be saidto have arrived at self-possession.
He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.
The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.
Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast, In hamlets, palaces, and parks, And told the truant by his marks,- Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.
In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.
Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.
What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.