Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them

Marriage is the perfection of what love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.

Love, and you shall be loved.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs,...

Ein Freund ist ein Mensch, vor dem man laut denken kann.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I...

Good bye, proud world! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine

We go to Europe to be Americanized.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I’ve done. But I’m telling you honestly that it doesn’t surprise me. I knew I could do it.

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestions, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement, a selecting principle, gathering his like unto him wherever he goes. What you are comes to you.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry

A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

All men in the abstract are just and good

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong

How painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality! It is next worst to receiving one

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is: Let there be truth between us two forevermore

Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

The aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone to seed

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a...

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors...

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

For each new morning with its light,For rest and shelter of the night,For health and food, for love and friends,For everything Thy goodness sends.

Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.