To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical...

It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.

si elle (la loi) est d’une telle nature qu’elle fasse de vous l’agent de l’injustice vis-à-vis d’autrui alors je déclare qu’il faut enfreindre la loi

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

The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a...

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

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...

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are...

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...

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,...

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?

It is never too late to give up your prejudices

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and...

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...

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast...

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

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...

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...

If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

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

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

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

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

The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a...

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

La loi n’a jamais rendu les hommes plus justes d’un iota ; et, à cause du respect qu’ils lui marquent, les êtres bien disposés eux-même deviennent les agents de l’injustice.

Philanthropy is. . . greatly overrated. A pain in the gut is not sympathy for the underprivileged, but the result of eating a green apple; the philanthropist gives to ease his own pain.

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...

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...

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing...

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,...

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no temple nor even a solitary column…However, out fates at...

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

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.

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

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 savage tribes have left off eating each...

Things do not change; we change.

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.

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

To be awake is to be alive.

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...

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...

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come...

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

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released...

We are constantly invited to be who we are.