The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.

The true poem is the poet’s mind.

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, “Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.” Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to...

We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use.

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

PoetTo mask the fiery thought,in simple words succeeds.For still the craft of genius is,To mask a king in weeds

To laugh often and much,to win the respect of the intelligent peopleand the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest criticsand endure the betrayal of false friends;to appreciate beauty;to find the best in...

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

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his...

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

New York is a sucked orange.

To be simple is to be great

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Imitation is suicide

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries,...

Each moment of the year has its own beauty, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

The question is, whether suicide is the way out or the way in.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions...

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him...

Civilization depends on morality.

Language is the archives of history.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild...

A day is a miniature eternity.

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.