Henry David Thoreau

“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.”

“The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.”

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”

“Far from New England's blustering shore,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.”

“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.”

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

“It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”

“It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.”

“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.”

“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.”

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.”

“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.”

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

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

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”

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

“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.”

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

“Things do not change; we change.”

“A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.”

“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.”

“Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.”

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”

“A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.”

“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.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”

“The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.”

“Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”

“As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.”

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

“What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?”

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

“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 so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.”

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.”

“The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.”

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

“My life has been the poem I would have writ,But I could not both live and utter it.”

“What is once well done is done forever.”

“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 practice 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, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

“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.”

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

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“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.”

“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”

“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.”

“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”

“Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.”

“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”

“I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“Simplify, simplify.”

“All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.”

“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.”

“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”

“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.”

“It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”

“I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.”

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

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

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

“I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

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

“He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.”

“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?”

“The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army — is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.”

“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?”

“It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.”

“The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.”

“I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”

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

“I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.”

“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.”

“Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

“'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.”

“Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.”

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

“Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.”

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.”

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

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

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.”

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”

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

“Truths and roses have thorns about them.”

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

“I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.”

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

“If a man walk 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 speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!”

“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”

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

“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.”

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

“The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward.  To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.  If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.”

“Dreams are the touchstones of our character.”

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

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

“Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“That government is best which governs least.”

“The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. 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.”

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

“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.”

“We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.”

“Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension, — provided you continue to breathe, — by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.”

“There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.”

“It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.”

“In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.”

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

“The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?”

“If misery loves company, misery has company enough.”

“If an injustice 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 government machine.”

“The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!”

“Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

“It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.”

“An unclean person is universally a slothful one.”

“In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.”

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

“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.”

“Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world.”

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

“I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.”

“If an injustice 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 government machine.”

“In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

“To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.”

“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.”

“That government is best which governs least.”

“While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not 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.”

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

“When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.”

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

“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 do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.”

“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.”

“We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.”

“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.”

“We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.”

“The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”

“Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.”

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

“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards, — because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth, — because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“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.”

“The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.”

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

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

“Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.”

“Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.”

“What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

“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.”

“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.”

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.”

“Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!”

“Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?”

“The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.”

“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.”

“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

“The heart is forever inexperienced.”

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

“Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.”

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

“Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.”

“Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.”

“It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.”

“Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.”

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

“Faith never makes a confession.”

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

“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.”

“True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.”

“I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

“In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.”

“Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.”

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

“To be awake is to be alive.”

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

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

“Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.”

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

“That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

“I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.”

“In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.”

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

“What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.”

“I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.”

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”

“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.”

“A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.”

“It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.”

“If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?”

“It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.”

“Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!”

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.”

“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.”

“Dreams are the touchstones of our character.”

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”

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

“Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.”

“We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!”

“Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.”

“It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

“Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.”

“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.”

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

“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 poorhouse.”

“We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

“Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

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

“How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?”

“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.”

“The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?”

“Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.”

“I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

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

“To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.”

“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.”

“There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

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

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

“Simplify, simplify.”

“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.”

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

“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 poorhouse.”

“Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.”

“If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“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.”

“The universe is wider than our views of it.”

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

“Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.”

“In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.”

“The savage in man is never quite eradicated.”

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

“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 practice 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, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”

“How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!”

“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.”

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

“Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.”

“The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.”

“Being is the great explainer.”

“Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.”

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

“There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.”

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

“Be not simply good - be good for something.”

“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

“I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.”

“It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.”

“I am a parcel of vain strivings tiedFor milder weather.”

“There is no just and serene criticism as yet.”

“But now I see I was not plucked for naught,To a strange place.”

“The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.”

“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.”

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelfAs I can now discern with this clear eye.”

“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?”

“My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,And will not mind to hit their proper targe.”

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

“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?”

“May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!”

“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 practice 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, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

“In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.”

“It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.”

“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”

“God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.”

“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.”

“After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.”

“My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.”

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

“Whate'er we leave to God, God doesAnd blesses us.”

“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.”

“I hear beyond the range of sound, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.”

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

“She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.”

“The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“The life that I aspire to liveWears its emblazonry.”

“Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.”

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

“A gun gives you the body, not the bird.”

“Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.”

“Truth, Goodness, Beauty — those celestial thrins,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.”

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

“Sphere Music — Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music — pure, unmixed music — in which no wail mingles.”

“How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?”

“That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.”

“There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.”

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

“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.”

“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.”

“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

“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.”

“Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.”

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

“Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.”

“There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.”

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

“We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.”

“Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.”

“The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is a great art to saunter.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.”

“One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.”

“Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.”

“And the cost of a thing it will be remembered as the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.”

“For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“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.”

“And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.”

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.”

“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.”

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.”

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”

“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.”

“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”

“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.”

“It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.”

“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”

“Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.”

“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

“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.”

“The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.”

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

“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.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.”

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

“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.”

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”

“The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.”

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

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

“You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.”

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

“The savage in man is never quite eradicated.”

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

“Any fool can make a ruleAnd every fool will mind it.”

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

“If a thousand [citizens] 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.”

“Things do not change; we change.”

“The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.”

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

“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.”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

“The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.”

“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”

“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it.”

“When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”

“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.”

“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 who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

“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?”

“Live the life you've dreamed.”

“Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.”

“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.”

“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.”

“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.”

“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.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“We are constantly invited to be what we are.”

“I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.”

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.”

“Be not simply good - be good for something.”

“It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.”

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.”

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

“A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.”

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

“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?”

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

“The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.”

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

“Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts.”

“How is it that what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived by the common sense and understanding only, is bare and bald, without halo or the blue enamel of intervening air? But let it be past or to come, and it is at once idealized. It is not simply the understanding now, but the imagination, that takes cognizance of it. The imagination requires a long range. It is the faculty of the poet to see present things as if, in this sense, also past and future, as if distant or universally significant.”

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

“Faith never makes a confession.”

“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. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity”

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

“As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day”

“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.”

“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”

“It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God. 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.”

“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.”

“There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.”

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

“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.”

“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. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.”

“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.”

“Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? … Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”

“True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.”

“Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.”

“Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.”

“Things do not change; we change.”

“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.”

“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.”