Every man believes that he has a greater possibility

The city is recruited from the country.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity

In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus...

What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

What school, college, or lecture bring men depends on what men bring to carry it home in.

If a man can… make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

Culture, with us, ends in headache

I like man, but not men

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the...

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable — any real insight or broad human sentiment.

Don’t trust man, great God, with more power than he has, until he has learned to use that little better

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant...

Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and...

Beauty without expression is boring.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

She shows us only surfaces but Nature is a million fathoms deep.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know the truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he...

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

What you are comes to you

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Art is a jealous mistress.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet...

A man is known by the books he reads.

So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die

I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

It is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and convenience for it

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.