The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he...

Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and by his...

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a...

The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

Čovek je ono što misli tokom čitavog dana

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Travel is a fools paradise.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I’m not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue

Oh, tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire

Character is that which can do without success.

The walking of man and all animals, is a falling forward

As every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

When a man meets his make, society begins.

Fear always springs from ignorance

Whatever limits us, we call Fate

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Men in all ways are better than they seem

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.

A forte always makes a foible.

‘Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need...

It is implied in all superior culture that a complete man would need no auxiliaries to his personal presence

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a...

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

The foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be th fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time.

Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part...

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which...

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

God enters by a private door into each individual.