Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.
How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
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.
I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
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.
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.
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.
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
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.
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
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.
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
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 is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
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.
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.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.
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.
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.
Live the life you’ve dreamed.
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.
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
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