Everything Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

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

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

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

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

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

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

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

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

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.

That government is best which governs least.

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

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

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

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

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

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

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.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.