Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance...

Every natural action is graceful.

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their...

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

The excellent is new forever.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

Language is fossil poetry

The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.

Nature hates calculators.

He thought it happier to be dead, to die for beauty, than live for bread

Life is a festival only to the wise.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please – you can never have both.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your own good

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

America is another name for opportunity.

Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

As soon as there is life, there is danger

The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas

It came into him life, it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions; it went from him poetry. It was a dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand,...

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they...

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank...

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Children are all foreigners.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has...

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing /to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline...

Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.