There is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd...

Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he...

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.

I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.

Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we find ou the secret of our own nature. They are test objects.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a...

The dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers.

What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know too well how slowly we edge along sideways to every thing good & brilliant in our lives & how casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of...

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else...

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Go where he will, the wise man is at home.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm

Our faith comes in moments… yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory...

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character

If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely...

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Men are respectable only as they respect

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it

Art is the path of the creator to his work

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that...

The South-wind bringsLife, sunshine and desire,And on every mount and meadowBreathes aromatic fire;But over the dead he has no power,The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;And, looking over the hills, I mournThe darling who shall...

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every...

An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, —”He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

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.