Top quotes by Henry David Thoreau

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. Votes: 38

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. Votes: 31

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. Votes: 31

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. Votes: 28

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. Votes: 24

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Votes: 20

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. Votes: 19

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Votes: 18

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Votes: 17

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. Votes: 15

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. Votes: 15

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. Votes: 15

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Votes: 14

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Votes: 14

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Votes: 13

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Votes: 11

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain. Votes: 11

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Votes: 10

The perception of beauty is a moral test. Votes: 10

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. Votes: 10

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. Votes: 10

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. Votes: 9

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages. Votes: 8

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Votes: 8

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars. Votes: 8

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. Votes: 8

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance. Votes: 7

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Votes: 5

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. Votes: 4

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. Votes: 3

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Votes: 0

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. Votes: 0

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. Votes: 0

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. Votes: 0

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. Votes: 0

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. Votes: 0

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us. Votes: 0

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? Votes: 0

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Votes: 0

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Votes: 0

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. Votes: 0

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. Votes: 0

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? Votes: 0

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. Votes: 0

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Votes: 0

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. Votes: 0

Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. Votes: 0

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Votes: 0

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Votes: 0

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest - but suffer from a constant strain. Votes: 0

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Votes: 0

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. Votes: 0

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. Votes: 0

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. Votes: 0

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. Votes: 0

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe. Votes: 0

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams. Votes: 0

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. Votes: 0

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. Votes: 0

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. Votes: 0

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls. Votes: 0

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear. Votes: 0

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. Votes: 0

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. Votes: 0

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. Votes: 0

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. Votes: 0

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances. Votes: 0

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent. Votes: 0

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. Votes: 0

The heart is forever inexperienced. Votes: 0

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. Votes: 0

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. Votes: 0

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free. Votes: 0

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. Votes: 0

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest. Votes: 0

There is no remedy for love but to love more. Votes: 0

Things do not change; we change. Votes: 0

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. Votes: 0

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. Votes: 0

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way. Votes: 0

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. Votes: 0

What is once well done is done forever. Votes: 0

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. Votes: 0

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Votes: 0

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. Votes: 0

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument. Votes: 0

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society. Votes: 0

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Votes: 0

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Votes: 0

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. Votes: 0

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. Votes: 0

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Votes: 0

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Votes: 0

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Votes: 0

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor. Votes: 0

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. Votes: 0

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. Votes: 0

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else. Votes: 0

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. Votes: 0

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all? Votes: 0

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Votes: 0

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. Votes: 0

It is never too late to give up your prejudices Votes: 0

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Votes: 0

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. Votes: 0

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. Votes: 0

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a spectulator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. Votes: 0

This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought out many inventions, but how to take many fishes before the sun sets, with slender birchen pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough for him. Votes: 0

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." Votes: 0

It costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in...and if he [the sun] is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided." Votes: 0

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers. Votes: 0

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode. Votes: 0

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. Votes: 0

In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. Votes: 0

You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate. Votes: 0

So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders. Votes: 0

But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate. Votes: 0

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Votes: 0

He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Votes: 0

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Votes: 0

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. Votes: 0

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. Votes: 0

Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing. Votes: 0

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. Votes: 0

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. Votes: 0

While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England. Votes: 0

The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age. Votes: 0

This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. Votes: 0

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. Votes: 0

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments. Votes: 0

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. Votes: 0

In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine. Votes: 0

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience. Votes: 0

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Votes: 0

Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to! Votes: 0

This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious. Votes: 0

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? Votes: 0

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams. Votes: 0

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced. Votes: 0

I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. Votes: 0

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Votes: 0

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere. Votes: 0

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. Votes: 0

Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life Votes: 0

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live. Votes: 0

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. Votes: 0

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. Votes: 0

Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? Votes: 0

The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is peaceful as a dream. Votes: 0

We are constantly invited to be who we are. Votes: 0

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. Votes: 0

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. Votes: 0

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date. Votes: 0

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. Votes: 0

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. Votes: 0

All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. Votes: 0

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man. Votes: 0

Every child begins the world again. Votes: 0

Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare? Votes: 0

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong. Votes: 0

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Votes: 0

On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there. Votes: 0

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one. Votes: 0

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Votes: 0

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated? Votes: 0

March to the beat of your own drummer. Votes: 0

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see. Votes: 0

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams. Votes: 0

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. Votes: 0

Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it. Votes: 0

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us. Votes: 0

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before. Votes: 0

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. Votes: 0

be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be. Votes: 0

The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! Votes: 0

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Votes: 0

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world. Votes: 0

The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain. Votes: 0

It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake. Votes: 0

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. Votes: 0

Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. Votes: 0

Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. Votes: 0

Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not. Votes: 0

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds. Votes: 0

The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well as nature. Votes: 0

Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it. Votes: 0

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. Votes: 0

The bluebird carries the sky on his back. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse. Votes: 0

Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them. Votes: 0

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself. Votes: 0

Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Votes: 0

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. Votes: 0

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Votes: 0

Men are born to succeed, not to fail. Votes: 0

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord. Votes: 0

If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow. Votes: 0

No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. Votes: 0

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify. Votes: 0

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. Votes: 0

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him. Votes: 0

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties! Votes: 0

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit. Votes: 0

I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves Votes: 0

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. Votes: 0

The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves to many professions which are much more sought after. They suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom. Votes: 0

The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs. Votes: 0

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. Votes: 0

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants. Votes: 0

That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience. Votes: 0

The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body. Votes: 0

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness. Votes: 0

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. Votes: 0

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely." Votes: 0

It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. Votes: 0

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple. Votes: 0

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing. Votes: 0

The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised. Votes: 0

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. Votes: 0

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on. Votes: 0

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled. Votes: 0

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. Votes: 0

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Votes: 0

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. Votes: 0

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. Votes: 0

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. Votes: 0

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. Votes: 0

Dreams are the touchstones of our character. Votes: 0

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Votes: 0

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. Votes: 0

On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company. Votes: 0

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen. Votes: 0

In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more. Votes: 0

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also. Votes: 0

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. Votes: 0

When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen. Votes: 0

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Votes: 0

The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!... What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. Votes: 0

You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society. Votes: 0

The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,--a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,--to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. Votes: 0

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. Votes: 0

City life is millions of people being lonesome together. Votes: 0

If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man. Votes: 0

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. Votes: 0

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things. Votes: 0

Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. Votes: 0

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation. Votes: 0

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. Votes: 0

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain... Votes: 0

Man is the artificer of his own happiness. Votes: 0

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve. Votes: 0

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism. Votes: 0

Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. Votes: 0

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Votes: 0

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants. Votes: 0

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character. Votes: 0

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. Votes: 0

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. Votes: 0

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. Votes: 0

Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. Votes: 0

The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. Votes: 0

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up. Votes: 0

Faith never makes a confession. Votes: 0

The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely. Votes: 0

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Votes: 0

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. Votes: 0

The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. Votes: 0

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Votes: 0

Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels? Votes: 0

The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm. Votes: 0

When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc, etc - I cannot but feel as I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country. Votes: 0

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. Votes: 0

Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined. Votes: 0

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience. Votes: 0

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. Votes: 0

In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs. Votes: 0

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. Votes: 0

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this? Votes: 0

If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success. Votes: 0

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard. Votes: 0

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see. Votes: 0

I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul. Votes: 0

It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life. Votes: 0

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. Votes: 0

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. Votes: 0

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Votes: 0

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. Votes: 0

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. Votes: 0

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit. Votes: 0

Nature is full of genius, full of divinity. Votes: 0

As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Votes: 0

Things don't change. We change. Votes: 0

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. Votes: 0

A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveler, supposing that I had been traveling ever since, and had now come round again. Votes: 0

We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird. Votes: 0

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. Votes: 0

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Votes: 0

Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? Votes: 0

The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched. Votes: 0

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. Votes: 0

Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it. Votes: 0

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? Votes: 0

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. Votes: 0

Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted,but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate. Votes: 0

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage? Votes: 0

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. Votes: 0

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for. Votes: 0

Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,--these are some of our astronomers. Votes: 0

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties. Votes: 0

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived. Votes: 0

It's not enough to be busy. Votes: 0

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Votes: 0

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. Votes: 0

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. Votes: 0

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. Votes: 0

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. Votes: 0

No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. Votes: 0

I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly. Votes: 0

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Votes: 0

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. Votes: 0

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Votes: 0

Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail. Votes: 0

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance. Votes: 0

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Votes: 0

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might. Votes: 0

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor. Votes: 0

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Votes: 0

The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring. Votes: 0

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. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. Votes: 0

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace. Votes: 0

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain. Votes: 0

Wherever you may seek solitude, men will ferret you out and compel you to belong to their desperate company of oddfellows. Votes: 0

There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds; the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly filial. Votes: 0

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. Votes: 0

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. Votes: 0

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. Votes: 0

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. Votes: 0

Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers. Votes: 0

The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, - and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment. Votes: 0

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Votes: 0

I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again. Votes: 0

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone. Votes: 0

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. Votes: 0

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. Votes: 0

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. Votes: 0

Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two. Votes: 0

Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth. Votes: 0

We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. Votes: 0

As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers. Votes: 0

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures. Votes: 0

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. Votes: 0

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness. Votes: 0

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. Votes: 0

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. Votes: 0

Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself. Votes: 0

That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied! Votes: 0

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic. Votes: 0

The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects. Votes: 0

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case. Votes: 0

if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well? Votes: 0

I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. Votes: 0

Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good. Votes: 0

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech. Votes: 0

The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He recognizes no faith above a creed, thinking this straw by which he is moored does him good service, because his sheet anchor does not drag. Votes: 0

A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag. Votes: 0

In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. Votes: 0

Goodness is the only investment that never fails. Votes: 0

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. Votes: 0

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. Votes: 0

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. Votes: 0

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural... Votes: 0

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated. Votes: 0

A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper. Votes: 0

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel. Votes: 0

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia. Votes: 0

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. Votes: 0

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only! Votes: 0

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. Votes: 0

They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates. Votes: 0

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. Votes: 0

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces. Votes: 0

The devil finds work for idle hands. Votes: 0

Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. Votes: 0

As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones. Votes: 0

It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Equally important is the job you are working at. Votes: 0

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. Votes: 0

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Votes: 0

How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with. Votes: 0

The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows. Votes: 0

It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days. Votes: 0

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder? Votes: 0

Between whom there is hearty truth there is love.... Votes: 0

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Votes: 0

There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth, we call it Love. Votes: 0

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today. Votes: 0

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption. Votes: 0

It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice. Votes: 0

Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! Votes: 0

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men. Votes: 0

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor? Votes: 0

In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. Votes: 0

Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them. Votes: 0

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. Votes: 0

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. Votes: 0

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground. Votes: 0

The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out tome on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest. Votes: 0

I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man's "origin, purpose, and destiny." He was more practical than that. He is full of wisdom applied to human relations,--to the private life,--the family,--government, etc. It is remarkable that, according to his own account, the sum and substance of his teaching is, as you know, to do as you would be done by. Votes: 0

Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten. Votes: 0

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? Votes: 0

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place. She is most significant to a lover. A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant. . . Votes: 0

Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there. Votes: 0

I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too. Votes: 0

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually. Votes: 0

If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler. Votes: 0

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he. Votes: 0

The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil. Votes: 0

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective. Votes: 0

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Votes: 0

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. Votes: 0

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. Votes: 0

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us. Votes: 0

I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched. Votes: 0

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. Votes: 0

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. Votes: 0

Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him? Votes: 0

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now. Votes: 0

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. Votes: 0

Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. Votes: 0

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing. Votes: 0

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Votes: 0

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent. Votes: 0

Music never stops; it is only the listening that is intermittent. Votes: 0

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant. Votes: 0

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then Votes: 0

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports. Votes: 0

That grand old poem called Winter Votes: 0

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Votes: 0

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent. Votes: 0

Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone. Votes: 0

Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. Votes: 0

The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature for him. Votes: 0

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. Votes: 0

I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me. Votes: 0

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor? Votes: 0

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer. Votes: 0

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Votes: 0

A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it. Votes: 0

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span. Votes: 0

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia. Votes: 0

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Votes: 0

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate. Votes: 0

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. Votes: 0

Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray? Votes: 0

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage. Votes: 0

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher. Votes: 0

Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. Votes: 0

Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet. Votes: 0

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful. Votes: 0

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter. Votes: 0

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. Votes: 0

To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane may be had. Votes: 0

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. Votes: 0

The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones. Votes: 0

As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Votes: 0

I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. Votes: 0

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. Votes: 0

I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the "hot bread and sweet cakes;" and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe. Votes: 0

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature. Votes: 0

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. Votes: 0

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Votes: 0

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Votes: 0

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Votes: 0

An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of the body. Votes: 0

The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from; man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from. Votes: 0

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed. Votes: 0

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness. Votes: 0

The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences. Votes: 0

All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy. Votes: 0

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion. Votes: 0

Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds. Votes: 0

I should fear the infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, thumoi phileousa te, kedomene te. Votes: 0

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any naturalobject, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still. Votes: 0

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world. Votes: 0

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets. Votes: 0

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen. Votes: 0

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Votes: 0

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both. Votes: 0

Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays. Votes: 0

In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world. Votes: 0

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives. Votes: 0

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you. Votes: 0

Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see it. Votes: 0

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. Votes: 0

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. Votes: 0

I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle; he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure. Votes: 0

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. Votes: 0

Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify! Votes: 0

We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Votes: 0

I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth. Votes: 0

I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light. Votes: 0

New earths, new themes expect us. Votes: 0

News Coverage!! As news expose rather than cover events. Votes: 0

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray. Votes: 0

The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. Votes: 0

There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense. Votes: 0

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. Votes: 0

When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are noble themselves. Votes: 0

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. Votes: 0

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. Votes: 0

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. Votes: 0

The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July. Votes: 0

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground. Votes: 0

October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight. Votes: 0

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. Votes: 0

There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east. Votes: 0

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. Votes: 0

In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,--it is so much the more sensitive. Votes: 0

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. Votes: 0

A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. Votes: 0

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever. Votes: 0

Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world. Votes: 0

As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see. Votes: 0

The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. Votes: 0

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am! Votes: 0

The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. Votes: 0

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Votes: 0

To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Votes: 0

In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language. Votes: 0

We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.At any meeting of politicianshow impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution! Votes: 0

We are all of us more or less active physiognomists. Votes: 0

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark. Votes: 0

I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army. Votes: 0

Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work .... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences; but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind. Votes: 0

The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again. Votes: 0

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning. Votes: 0

It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. Votes: 0

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public. Votes: 0

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World Votes: 0

In wildness is the preservation of the world. Votes: 0

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. Votes: 0

Every sentence is the result of a long probation. Votes: 0

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it. Votes: 0

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. Votes: 0

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. Votes: 0

Do not despair of life. Think of the fox, prowling in a winter night to satisfy his hunger. His race survives; I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide. Votes: 0

We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today? Votes: 0

The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. Votes: 0

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light. Votes: 0

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck them. Votes: 0

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. Votes: 0

I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true. Votes: 0

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Votes: 0

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Votes: 0

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress. Votes: 0

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it. Votes: 0

I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited. Votes: 0

I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home. Votes: 0

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction. Votes: 0

The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. Votes: 0

I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground. Votes: 0

To regret deeply is to live afresh. Votes: 0

You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing. Votes: 0

I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing. Votes: 0

Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes. Votes: 0

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. Votes: 0

It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched. Votes: 0

First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it. Votes: 0

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. Votes: 0

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor. Votes: 0

There is ripe fruit over your head. Votes: 0

Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head. Votes: 0

Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover. Votes: 0

The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every State which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the Northern forests who were. Votes: 0

Fire is the most tolerable third party Votes: 0

I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. Votes: 0

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs Votes: 0

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes Votes: 0

The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet Votes: 0

Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it Votes: 0

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Votes: 0

Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Votes: 0

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Votes: 0

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold. Votes: 0

Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after. Votes: 0

The fate of the country... does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning. Votes: 0

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. Votes: 0

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. Votes: 0

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him. Votes: 0

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. Votes: 0

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. Votes: 0

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety. Votes: 0

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last. Votes: 0

that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. Votes: 0

A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. Votes: 0

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Votes: 0

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death Votes: 0

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. Votes: 0

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. Votes: 0

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. Votes: 0

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Votes: 0

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. Votes: 0

I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. Votes: 0

I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse. Votes: 0

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. Votes: 0

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. Votes: 0

In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. Votes: 0

Thu luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. Votes: 0

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. Votes: 0

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated. Votes: 0

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar Votes: 0

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. Votes: 0

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. Votes: 0

Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Votes: 0

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight. Votes: 0

I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. Votes: 0

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven Votes: 0

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such. Votes: 0

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. Votes: 0

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. Votes: 0

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got. Votes: 0

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. Votes: 0

It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear. Votes: 0

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? Votes: 0

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. Votes: 0

We are more of the earth,Farther from heaven these days. Votes: 0

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. Votes: 0

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid. Votes: 0

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. Votes: 0

I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. Votes: 0

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. Votes: 0

Wildness is the preservation of the World. Votes: 0

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used. Votes: 0

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair. Votes: 0

To be awake is to be alive. Votes: 0

The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art. Votes: 0

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. Votes: 0

With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before. Votes: 0

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Votes: 0

Simplify, simplify. Votes: 0

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. Votes: 0

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. Votes: 0

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard Votes: 0

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. Votes: 0

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again, it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening, reminiscences of our sanest hours. The voice of nature is always encouraging. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one. Votes: 0

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment Votes: 0

The savage in man is never quite eradicated. Votes: 0

We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell. Votes: 0

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer. Votes: 0

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor Votes: 0

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions. Votes: 0

Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then. Votes: 0

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect. Votes: 0

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind. Votes: 0

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Votes: 0

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime? Votes: 0

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. Votes: 0

If we see nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as progressing, she is beautiful. Votes: 0

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them. Votes: 0

I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak. Votes: 0

I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is. Votes: 0

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! Votes: 0

Simplify, simplify, simplify. Votes: 0

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth. Votes: 0

As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend. Votes: 0

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Votes: 0

Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. Votes: 0

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. Votes: 0

An unclean person is universally a slothful one. Votes: 0

There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. Votes: 0

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Votes: 0

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality. Votes: 0

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. Votes: 0

You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddestand most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring. Votes: 0

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame. Votes: 0

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder. Votes: 0

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. Votes: 0

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. Votes: 0

I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk. Votes: 0

However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. Votes: 0

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. Votes: 0

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity. Votes: 0

Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development. Votes: 0

No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging. Votes: 0

Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man? Votes: 0

When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers. Votes: 0

The universe is wider than our views of it. Votes: 0

The stars are the apexes of what triangles! Votes: 0

New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country. Votes: 0

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. Votes: 0

Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. Votes: 0

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost. Votes: 0

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Votes: 0

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. Votes: 0

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter? Votes: 0

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition. Votes: 0

One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter. Votes: 0

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts. Votes: 0

. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . . Votes: 0

Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. Votes: 0

Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarelyseem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do. Votes: 0

The sun is but a morning star. Votes: 0

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science. Votes: 0

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. Votes: 0

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it. Votes: 0

It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness - breaking nature, taming the soil. feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him. Votes: 0

The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad. Votes: 0

The tavern will compare favorably with the church. Votes: 0

Men have become the tools of their tools. Votes: 0

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once. Votes: 0

What is man but a mass of thawing clay? Votes: 0

The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. Votes: 0

Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining. Votes: 0

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you. Votes: 0

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed. Votes: 0

Truths and roses have thorns about them. Votes: 0

I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. Votes: 0

All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. Votes: 0

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Votes: 0

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. Votes: 0

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds. Votes: 0

The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Votes: 0

The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Votes: 0

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Votes: 0

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Votes: 0

Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. Votes: 0

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. Votes: 0

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. Votes: 0

A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Votes: 0

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. Votes: 0

An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancyfor building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me. Votes: 0

The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land. Votes: 0

Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream. Votes: 0

What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of? Votes: 0

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Votes: 0

The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. Votes: 0

This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature. Votes: 0

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet. Votes: 0

Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler. Votes: 0

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be? Votes: 0

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind. Votes: 0

The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere disseminated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth holds them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not yet out. Votes: 0

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Votes: 0

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray? Votes: 0

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there. Votes: 0

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Votes: 0

There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me. Votes: 0

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after. Votes: 0

The most alive is the wildest. Votes: 0

Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure. Votes: 0

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. Votes: 0

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me. Votes: 0

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are halfconcealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.... We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams. Votes: 0

We must take root; send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. Votes: 0

There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning. Votes: 0

My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. Votes: 0

As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Votes: 0

Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher. Votes: 0

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks. Votes: 0

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. Votes: 0

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately... Votes: 0

I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found. Votes: 0

It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Votes: 0

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last. Votes: 0

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees. Votes: 0

What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet. Votes: 0

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love! Votes: 0

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. Votes: 0

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Votes: 0

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. Votes: 0

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference. Votes: 0

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Votes: 0

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. Votes: 0

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches. Votes: 0

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them. Votes: 0

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. Votes: 0

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life. Votes: 0

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. Votes: 0

If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Votes: 0

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. Votes: 0

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Votes: 0

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone. Votes: 0

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. Votes: 0

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do? Votes: 0

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. Votes: 0

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated? Votes: 0

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being. Votes: 0

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others? Votes: 0

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious. Votes: 0

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened. Votes: 0

That government is best which governs least. Votes: 0

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid. Votes: 0

Be not simply good - be good for something. Votes: 0

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something. Votes: 0

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. Votes: 0

Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. Votes: 0

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. Votes: 0

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it." Votes: 0

. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward. Votes: 0

...A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from - toward; it is the history of every one of us. It is a great art to saunter. Votes: 0

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! Votes: 0

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land. Votes: 0

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return. Votes: 0

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Votes: 0

A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. Votes: 0

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor. Votes: 0

A fact may blossom into a truth. Votes: 0

A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. Votes: 0

A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. Votes: 0

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. Votes: 0

A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business. Votes: 0

A goal is a dream taken seriously. Votes: 0

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck. Votes: 0

A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. Votes: 0

A gun will give you the body, not the bird Votes: 0

A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart. Votes: 0

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams. Votes: 0

A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's. Votes: 0

A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more "harmonious compositions." Votes: 0

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for. Votes: 0

A little thought is sexton to all the world. Votes: 0

A man can suffocate on courtesy. Votes: 0

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate. Votes: 0

A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. Votes: 0

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it. Votes: 0

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Votes: 0

A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine. Votes: 0

A man may travel fast enough and earn his living on the road. Votes: 0

A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. Votes: 0

A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. Votes: 0

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe the country. Votes: 0

A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman. Votes: 0

A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. Votes: 0

A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe. Votes: 0

A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! Votes: 0

A man sits as many risks as he runs. Votes: 0

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain. Votes: 0

A man who has to go to the village to get the news hasn't heard from himself in a long time. Votes: 0

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. Votes: 0

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful - while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with - he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? Votes: 0

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Votes: 0

A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he wouldlie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends. Votes: 0

A man's wealth is measured by what he doesn't need. Votes: 0

A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result. Votes: 0

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority. Votes: 0

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. Votes: 0

A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age. Votes: 0

A nation may be ever so civilized and yet lack wisdom. Votes: 0

A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. Votes: 0

A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. Votes: 0

A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so. Votes: 0

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. Votes: 0

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Votes: 0

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. Votes: 0

A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it. Votes: 0

A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province. Votes: 0

A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused. Votes: 0

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Votes: 0

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors Votes: 0

A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters. Votes: 0

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts. Votes: 0

A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood. Votes: 0

A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey. Votes: 0

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. Votes: 0

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view. Votes: 0

A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness. Votes: 0

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. Votes: 0

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. Votes: 0

A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting. Votes: 0

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Votes: 0

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen. Votes: 0

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. Votes: 0

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. Votes: 0

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. Votes: 0

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. Votes: 0

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. Votes: 0

Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations tomen; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. Votes: 0

After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask. Votes: 0

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books. Votes: 0

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Votes: 0

After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence. Votes: 0

Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon - to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. it is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain weakness that I seek society ever. Votes: 0

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. Votes: 0

Alas! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of faith in the prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but by one man. Hewho wants help wants everything. True, this is the condition of our weakness, but it can never be the means of our recovery. We must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together. Votes: 0

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Votes: 0

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form. Votes: 0

All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Votes: 0

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear. Votes: 0

All good things are wild and free. Votes: 0

All great enterprises are self-supporting. Votes: 0

All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. Votes: 0

All men are children, and of one family. Votes: 0

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant. Votes: 0

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance. Votes: 0

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune. Votes: 0

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. Votes: 0

All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it. Votes: 0

All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. Votes: 0

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises. Votes: 0

All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet. Votes: 0

All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. Votes: 0

All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences. Votes: 0

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can. Votes: 0

All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state. Votes: 0

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes. Votes: 0

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method. Votes: 0

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply. Votes: 0

Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary. Votes: 0

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment. Votes: 0

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be. Votes: 0

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. Votes: 0

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed. Votes: 0

An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of theEnglish nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud of it. But an American--one who has made tolerable use of his opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of man in these respects. Votes: 0

And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here. Votes: 0

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? Votes: 0

And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? Votes: 0

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon. Votes: 0

And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Votes: 0

And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. Votes: 0

Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. Votes: 0

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. Votes: 0

Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. Votes: 0

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Votes: 0

Any sincere thought is irresistible. Votes: 0

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law. Votes: 0

Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute? Votes: 0

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat. Votes: 0

Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots. Votes: 0

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense. Votes: 0

Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. Votes: 0

As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour. Votes: 0

As a man thinks of himself, so he is. Votes: 0

As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once. Votes: 0

As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. Votes: 0

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country. Votes: 0

As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Votes: 0

As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a failure.... It is a greater strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,--to say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,--almost any timber will give way. Votes: 0

As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Votes: 0

As for health, consider yourself well. Votes: 0

As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtlest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. Votes: 0

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top. Votes: 0

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any. We can tolerate all philosophies.... It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us. Votes: 0

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Votes: 0

As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect. Votes: 0

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. Votes: 0

As if there were safety in stupidity alone Votes: 0

As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me. Votes: 0

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis. Votes: 0

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. Votes: 0

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life. Votes: 0

As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now as a New-Englander. Votes: 0

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. Votes: 0

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails. Votes: 0

As we grow older, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves. Votes: 0

As we lay huddled together under the tent, which leaked considerably about the sides, with our baggage at our feet, we listened to some of the grandest thunder which I ever heard, -rapid peals, round and plump, bang, bang, bang in succession, like artillery from some fortress in the sky; and the lightning was proportionally brilliant. The Indian said, 'It must be good powder.' All for the benefit of the moose and us, echoing far over the concealed lakes. Votes: 0

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind. Votes: 0

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Votes: 0

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die. Votes: 0

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time." Votes: 0

Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts. Votes: 0

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. Votes: 0

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death. Votes: 0

At least let us have healthy books. Votes: 0

At present our only true names are nicknames. Votes: 0

At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness. Votes: 0

At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment. Votes: 0

Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most. Votes: 0

Be it life or death, we crave only reality. Votes: 0

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested. Votes: 0

Be not merely good. Be good for something. Votes: 0

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be. Votes: 0

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. Often the poor man is not cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. Votes: 0

Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end. Votes: 0

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Votes: 0

Before the land rose out of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned; and between high and low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can inhabit. Votes: 0

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good. Votes: 0

Behold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun until his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course. Votes: 0

Being is the great explainer. Votes: 0

Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems. Votes: 0

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. . . . Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. Votes: 0

Beware of any profession for which you must buy new clothes. Votes: 0

Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots. Votes: 0

Birds never sing in caves. Votes: 0

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God. Votes: 0

Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined. Votes: 0

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. Votes: 0

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. Votes: 0

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. Votes: 0

Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell. Votes: 0

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature. Votes: 0

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand. Votes: 0

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books. Votes: 0

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Votes: 0

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns. Votes: 0

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Votes: 0

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. Votes: 0

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived. Votes: 0

But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constantand imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. Votes: 0

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried. Votes: 0

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire. Votes: 0

But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness. Votes: 0

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions. Votes: 0

But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools. Votes: 0

But why should not the New Englander try new adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men. Votes: 0

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. Votes: 0

By one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants into all her recesses. Votes: 0

By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry. Votes: 0

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least. Votes: 0

Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us? Votes: 0

Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it.He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself. Votes: 0

Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Votes: 0

Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. 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. Votes: 0

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. Votes: 0

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. Votes: 0

Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. Votes: 0

Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap. Votes: 0

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. Votes: 0

Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the world. He knew what he was thinking of when he said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." I draw near to him at such a time. Yet he taught mankind but imperfectly how to live; his thoughts were all directed toward another world. There is another kind of success than his. Even here we have a sort of living to get, and must buffet it somewhat longer. 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. Votes: 0

Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn. Votes: 0

Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off. Votes: 0

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. Votes: 0

Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. Votes: 0

Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast. Votes: 0

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans. Votes: 0

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction. Votes: 0

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison. Votes: 0

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions. Votes: 0

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. Votes: 0

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts. Votes: 0

Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic. Votes: 0

Count your age with friends but not with years. Votes: 0

Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy. Votes: 0

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. Votes: 0

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Votes: 0

Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life. Votes: 0

Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail. Votes: 0

Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography Votes: 0

Dissent without action is consent. Votes: 0

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. All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God Votes: 0

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles. Votes: 0

Do not engage to find things as you think they are. Votes: 0

Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you. Votes: 0

Do not read the newspapers. Votes: 0

Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. Votes: 0

Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers. Votes: 0

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Votes: 0

Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way. Votes: 0

Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log. Votes: 0

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin! Votes: 0

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived. Votes: 0

Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for. Votes: 0

Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how past ages have loitered and erred. "Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?" Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth. Votes: 0

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse. Votes: 0

Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity. Votes: 0

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. Votes: 0

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Votes: 0

Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap. Votes: 0

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes. Votes: 0

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Votes: 0

East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, whobuilt his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;MCato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Votes: 0

Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook. Votes: 0

Endeavor to live the life you have imagined. Votes: 0

Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love. Votes: 0

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included,--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wildness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not the wild man in her, became extinct. Votes: 0

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired. Votes: 0

Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. Votes: 0

Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible. Votes: 0

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. Votes: 0

Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport. Votes: 0

Even the best things are not equal to their fame. Votes: 0

Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage. Votes: 0

Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Votes: 0

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. Votes: 0

Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits. Votes: 0

Even trees do not die without a groan. Votes: 0

Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown. Votes: 0

Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it. Votes: 0

Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it...At last we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. Votes: 0

Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. Votes: 0

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Votes: 0

Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle. Votes: 0

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. Votes: 0

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. Votes: 0

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer. Votes: 0

Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet. Votes: 0

Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. Votes: 0

Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. Votes: 0

Every poet has trembled on the verge of science. Votes: 0

Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but after all, it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment to the traveler, and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste. Votes: 0

Every sunset I witness inspires me with the desire to go to West as distant and as fair as that which the sun goes down. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. Votes: 0

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. Votes: 0

Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Votes: 0

Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us. Votes: 0

Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men. Votes: 0

Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness. Votes: 0

Everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Votes: 0

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature. Votes: 0

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. Votes: 0

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration. Votes: 0

Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four. Votes: 0

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced. Votes: 0

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Faith, indeed, is all the reform that is needed; it is itself a reform. Votes: 0

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs. Votes: 0

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. Votes: 0

Far from New England's blustering shore,New England's worm her hulk shall bore,And sink her in the Indian seas,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas. Votes: 0

Far travel, very far travel, or travail, comes near to the worth of staying at home. Votes: 0

Few, if any, creatures are equally active all night. Votes: 0

find your eternity in each moment Votes: 0

Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. Votes: 0

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation. Votes: 0

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Votes: 0

For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company. Votes: 0

For a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost...Not 'til we are lost do we begin to find ourselves. Votes: 0

For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself Votes: 0

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? Votes: 0

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do. Votes: 0

For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? Votes: 0

For in the wood these golden days Some leaf obeys its Maker's call. And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall. Votes: 0

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever. Votes: 0

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. Votes: 0

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.' Votes: 0

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent. Votes: 0

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. Votes: 0

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. Votes: 0

For my part, I would rather look toward Rutland than Jerusalem. Rutland,--modern town,--land of ruts,--trivial and worn,--not toosacred,--with no holy sepulchre, but profane green fields and dusty roads, and opportunity to live as holy a life as you can, where the sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place. Votes: 0

For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. Votes: 0

For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave. Votes: 0

For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. Votes: 0

For things to change, we must change. Votes: 0

Four things to think about. 1. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. 2. Let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred. 3. Keep three chairs in your house. One for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. 4. To preserve your relationship to nature, make your life more moral, more pure, more innocent. Votes: 0

Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words "ANGLO SAXON" on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades. Votes: 0

Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. Votes: 0

Friends . . . They are kind to each other's hopes. They cherish each other's dreams. Votes: 0

Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. Votes: 0

Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion. Votes: 0

Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody. Votes: 0

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers. Votes: 0

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!.... Votes: 0

Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act. Votes: 0

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. Votes: 0

From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit. Votes: 0

Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. Votes: 0

Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend. Votes: 0

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Give me the old familiar walk, postoffice and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We'll go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Go confidently ... Live the life that you imagined. Votes: 0

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined. Votes: 0

Go not to the object; let the object come to you. Votes: 0

God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. Votes: 0

God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. Votes: 0

Going from--toward; it is the history of every one of us. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in their pockets. Votes: 0

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. Votes: 0

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. Votes: 0

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return-prepared to send beck our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, brother and sister, and wife and child and friends and never see them again,-if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled your affairs and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk. Votes: 0

Hate can pardon more than love. Votes: 0

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. Votes: 0

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land. Votes: 0

Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere.... We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up. Votes: 0

He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past Votes: 0

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Votes: 0

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application. Votes: 0

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach. Votes: 0

He listens equally to the prayers of the believer and the unbeliever. Votes: 0

He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country. Votes: 0

He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth. Votes: 0

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born. Votes: 0

He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds. Votes: 0

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. Votes: 0

He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed; ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed. Votes: 0

He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics. Votes: 0

He who owns little is little owned. Votes: 0

He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer. Votes: 0

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly. Votes: 0

He who walks alone, waits for no-one. Votes: 0

Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it. Votes: 0

Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid. Votes: 0

Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature.... He must have no idiosyncracies, no particular bents or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy development, such as his portly person indicates, offering himself equally on all sides to men. Votes: 0

Here I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much time is in the germ! There is such an interval between my ideal and the actual in many circumstances that I may say I am unborn. Votes: 0

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man. Votes: 0

Here or nowhere is our heaven. Votes: 0

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men. Votes: 0

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first? Votes: 0

Hold fast to your most indefinite, waking dream. Votes: 0

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Votes: 0

Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. Votes: 0

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. Votes: 0

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Votes: 0

How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge? Votes: 0

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character? Votes: 0

How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time? Votes: 0

How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down? Votes: 0

How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding ; How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile. Votes: 0

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Votes: 0

How imperceptibly the first springing takes place! Votes: 0

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health! Votes: 0

How insupportable would be the days, if the night with its dews and darkness did not come to restore the drooping world. As the shades begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect. Votes: 0

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws. Votes: 0

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were tobegin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Votes: 0

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]. Votes: 0

How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed! Votes: 0

How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the wind will blow tomorrow? Votes: 0

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. Votes: 0

How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature! Votes: 0

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old - and so many books have been written - each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience - each field of thought wholly unexplored - the whole world is an America - a New World. Votes: 0

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls! Votes: 0

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden. Votes: 0

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint. Votes: 0

How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are! Votes: 0

How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature. Votes: 0

How we shall earn our bread is a grave question; yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let us not shirk it, as is usually done.It is the most important and practical question which is put to man. Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content to get our bread in some gross, careless, and hasty manner. Some men go a-hunting, some a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war; but none have so pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek to earn their bread. Votes: 0

How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called. Give me the goodness which has forgotten its own deeds,--which God has seen to be good, and let be. Votes: 0

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. Votes: 0

However mean your life is, meet it and live it. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it. Votes: 0

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. Votes: 0

Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm. Votes: 0

I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that ourlife should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower. Votes: 0

I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads. Votes: 0

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour. Votes: 0

I am a happy camper so I guess I'm doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. Votes: 0

I am a majority of one. Votes: 0

I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first. Votes: 0

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. Votes: 0

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is - I am out of my senses. 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? Votes: 0

I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land. Votes: 0

I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. Votes: 0

I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. Votes: 0

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them. Votes: 0

I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it nota real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with. Votes: 0

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. Votes: 0

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of! my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. Votes: 0

I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. Votes: 0

I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor. Votes: 0

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself. Votes: 0

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. Votes: 0

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age. Votes: 0

I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints. Votes: 0

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. Votes: 0

I am very little of a traveler. Votes: 0

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it. Votes: 0

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. Votes: 0

I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. Votes: 0

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung. Votes: 0

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man. Votes: 0

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morningwith a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Votes: 0

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. Votes: 0

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet. Votes: 0

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. Votes: 0

I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. Votes: 0

I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather. Votes: 0

I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous. Votes: 0

I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises.... While my townsmen and women are devoted in somany ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Votes: 0

I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends. Votes: 0

I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. Votes: 0

I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features. Votes: 0

I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; I would have each one be very careful to find out and preserve his own way. Votes: 0

I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold. Votes: 0

I did not know that we had ever quarreled. Votes: 0

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. Votes: 0

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. Votes: 0

I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life. Votes: 0

I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Votes: 0

I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe. Votes: 0

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. Votes: 0

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory. Votes: 0

I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. Votes: 0

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert. Votes: 0

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted. Votes: 0

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster. Votes: 0

I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. Votes: 0

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite. Votes: 0

I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. Votes: 0

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. Votes: 0

I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects. Votes: 0

I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population. Votes: 0

I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree itsbark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on. Votes: 0

I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know! Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it. Votes: 0

I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with thosewhich are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. Votes: 0

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Votes: 0

I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely. Votes: 0

I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidatesas the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. Votes: 0

I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge. Votes: 0

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. Votes: 0

I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way . Votes: 0

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. Votes: 0

I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." Votes: 0

I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the repose of untamableness. I dream of looking abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from some mountain-side,... to be nature looking into nature with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the sky. From some such recess I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts forth leaves. Votes: 0

I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded. Votes: 0

I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. Votes: 0

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! Votes: 0

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is madeand at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me. Votes: 0

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Votes: 0

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion. Votes: 0

I have a room all to myself; it is nature. Votes: 0

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. Votes: 0

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it. Votes: 0

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. Votes: 0

I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. Votes: 0

I have great faith in a seed. Votes: 0

I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island yet; but, like the man who, when forbidden to tread on English ground, carried Scottish ground in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots and in my hat,--and am I not made of Concord dust? I cannot realize that it is the roar of the sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden woods. I find more of Concord, after all, in the prospect of the sea, beyond Sandy Hook, than in the fields and woods. Votes: 0

I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. Votes: 0

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone. Votes: 0

I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen. Votes: 0

I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is... Votes: 0

I have just been through the process of killing a cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for this murder, and see that such actions are inconsistent with the poetic perception, however they may serve science, and will affect the quality of my observations. I pray that I may walk more innocently and serenely through nature. No reasoning whatever reconciles me to this act. It affects my day injuriously. I have lost some self-respect. I have a murderer's experience to a degree. Votes: 0

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude, where we meet our friends continually, and can imagine the outside world also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would fain hustle me into the almshouse for the sake of society, as if I were pining for that diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended man, and find constant employment. However, they do not believe a word I say. Votes: 0

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude. Votes: 0

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home. Votes: 0

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. Votes: 0

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. Votes: 0

I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off. Votes: 0

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet. Votes: 0

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,-who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. Votes: 0

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. Votes: 0

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary. Votes: 0

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live. Votes: 0

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. Votes: 0

I have no time to be in a hurry. Votes: 0

I have not earned what I have already enjoyed. Votes: 0

I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say. Votes: 0

I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth. Votes: 0

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are. Votes: 0

I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all. Votes: 0

I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of the rich. Votes: 0

I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income,for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. Votes: 0

I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. Votes: 0

I have travelled a good deal in Concord. Votes: 0

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. Votes: 0

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him? Votes: 0

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe "” "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. Votes: 0

I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse. Votes: 0

I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only. Votes: 0

I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,--if ten honest men only,--ay, if one HONESTman, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality. Votes: 0

I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. Votes: 0

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. Votes: 0

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. Votes: 0

I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and tohunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Votes: 0

I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Votes: 0

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. Votes: 0

I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. Votes: 0

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries. Votes: 0

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. Votes: 0

I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn. Votes: 0

I love a life whose plot is simple. Votes: 0

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this. Votes: 0

I love reform better than its modes. Votes: 0

I love the broad margin to my life. Votes: 0

I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. Votes: 0

I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth. Votes: 0

I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me. Votes: 0

I make myself rich by making my wants few. Votes: 0

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all. Votes: 0

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. Votes: 0

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. Votes: 0

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Votes: 0

I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them. Votes: 0

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me. Votes: 0

I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we. Votes: 0

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. Votes: 0

I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we donot teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual; however, for we do not habitually demand any more of each other. Votes: 0

I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field. Votes: 0

I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be. Votes: 0

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor. Votes: 0

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect asa neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen. Votes: 0

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory. Votes: 0

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases. Votes: 0

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside. Votes: 0

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Votes: 0

I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress. Votes: 0

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars. Votes: 0

I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts. Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's stream. Votes: 0

I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' feet and the wheel trach. An inch more to the right or left had sealed its fate, or an inch higher. Yet it lived and flourished, and never knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble, nor invite an evil fate by apprehending it. Votes: 0

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles,I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful. Votes: 0

I say, break the law. Votes: 0

I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly. Votes: 0

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? Votes: 0

I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live. Votes: 0

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. Votes: 0

I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous. Votes: 0

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Votes: 0

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again. Votes: 0

I stand in awe of my body. Votes: 0

I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled. Votes: 0

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it. Votes: 0

I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off. Votes: 0

I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere,--for I have had a little experience in that business,--that there isa desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country,--and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as an audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent. Votes: 0

I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations. Votes: 0

I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such [an oak grove], that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late. Votes: 0

I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens. Votes: 0

I think that every town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several, where a stick would never be cut for fuel, not for the navy, not to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses - a common possession for instruction and recreation. Votes: 0

I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace. Votes: 0

I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood. Votes: 0

I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural. Votes: 0

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Votes: 0

I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer. Votes: 0

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned. Votes: 0

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. Votes: 0

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. Votes: 0

I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. Votes: 0

I want nothing new, if I can have but a tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here! Votes: 0

I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. Votes: 0

I wanted to live deep and suck out the all the marrow of life (...). Votes: 0

I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream. Votes: 0

I was daily intoxicated, yet no man could call me intemperate. Votes: 0

I was determined to know beans. Votes: 0

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. Votes: 0

I was not born to be forced. Votes: 0

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. Votes: 0

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them. Votes: 0

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world. Votes: 0

I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived. Votes: 0

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. Votes: 0

I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. Votes: 0

I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon. Votes: 0

I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. Votes: 0

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. Votes: 0

I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account... Votes: 0

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together. Votes: 0

I would stand upon facts. Votes: 0

I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend. Votes: 0

I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or letin the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc. Votes: 0

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning. Votes: 0

Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect. Votes: 0

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? 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. Votes: 0

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Votes: 0

If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing. Votes: 0

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging. Votes: 0

If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on thevery spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,--how much anxiety and danger would vanish. Votes: 0

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. Votes: 0

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! Votes: 0

If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world. Votes: 0

If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America. Votes: 0

If common sense had been consulted, how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon or divine sense, how few marriages such as we witness would ever have taken place! Votes: 0

If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am. Votes: 0

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law. Votes: 0

If I am not I, who will be? Votes: 0

If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. Votes: 0

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. Votes: 0

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. Votes: 0

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer. Votes: 0

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. Votes: 0

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. Votes: 0

If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken. Votes: 0

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. Votes: 0

If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather, so as to be there when it cleared up; we are then in the most suitable mood, and nature is most fresh and inspiring. There is no serenity so fair as that which is just established in a tearful eye. Votes: 0

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones. Votes: 0

If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community. Votes: 0

If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow? Votes: 0

If Nature is our mother, then God is our father. Votes: 0

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. Votes: 0

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read. Votes: 0

If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them. Votes: 0

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. Votes: 0

If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. Votes: 0

If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. Votes: 0

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Votes: 0

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth Votes: 0

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out"¦ but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. Votes: 0

If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. Votes: 0

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. Votes: 0

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it. Votes: 0

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there. Votes: 0

If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. Votes: 0

If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about? Votes: 0

If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business. Votes: 0

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth. Votes: 0

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? Votes: 0

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. Votes: 0

If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Votes: 0

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. Votes: 0

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story. Votes: 0

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. [Like they say, 'Every cloud has a silver lining'...so if you are patient, expect, anticipate, look and work for some good to come from the cloud, you will be rewarded eventually!] Votes: 0

If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. Votes: 0

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. Votes: 0

If you are describing any occurrence... make two or more distinct reports at different times... We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods in order to perceive the whole. Votes: 0

If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. Votes: 0

If you give money, spend yourself with it. Votes: 0

If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end. Votes: 0

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today. Votes: 0

If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. Votes: 0

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. Votes: 0

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. Votes: 0

If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you. Votes: 0

If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. Votes: 0

If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro. Votes: 0

If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Votes: 0

If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. Votes: 0

If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Votes: 0

If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications. Votes: 0

Improve every opportunity to be melancholy. Votes: 0

In 1694 a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." But now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp itself. Votes: 0

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?' Votes: 0

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Votes: 0

In a pure society, the subject of marriage would not be so often avoided,--from shame and not from reverence, winked out of sight,and hinted at only; but treated naturally and simply,--perhaps simply avoided like the kindred mysteries. If it cannot be spoken of for shame, how can it be acted of? But, doubtless, there is far more purity, as well as more impurity, than is apparent. Votes: 0

In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong,--if it is only to make abetter paste blacking,--and they are themselves so much the better morally for it. Votes: 0

In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. Votes: 0

In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird. Votes: 0

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin. Votes: 0

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight. Votes: 0

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison. Votes: 0

In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,--fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other. Votes: 0

In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory. Votes: 0

In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes. Votes: 0

In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings. Votes: 0

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. Votes: 0

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains. Votes: 0

In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which is but materials to serve for a mythology. Votes: 0

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Votes: 0