Everything Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

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

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?