For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out ’twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved...

The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money ‘merely’ is to be truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets...

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.

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

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a-foot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles, the fare ninety cents. That...

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

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning...

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the...

‎I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of...

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

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...

It’s not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

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

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through...

We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The...

Probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule...