Cunning is strength withheld.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,―expensive races,―race living at the expense of race.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience...

The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us...

When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we...

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

A friend may be nature’s most magnificent creation.

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The only true gift is a portion of thyself.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst…They are for nothing but to inspire.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at...

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Friendship demands the ability to do without it.

This time,like all times, is a good time, if we but know what to do with it.

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy

England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children

Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay.

Proverbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions.

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Every noble activity makes room for itself

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man...

The dice of God are always loaded.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade....

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of water; in male and female; in the equation of...

Conservatism is more candid to behold another’s worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. The Conservative

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half...

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

The poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him

Self-trust is the essence of heroism.

The philosopher and lover of man have much harm to say of trade; but the historian will see that trade was the principle of Liberty; that trade planted America and destroyed Feudalism; that it makes...