Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui, vanish, – all duties even

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

I hate quotations.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything to others but what you are

Many time the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a...

We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.

Immortality will come to such as are fit for it; and he who would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men–that is genius.

There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he...

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

The years teach us much, which the days never knew.

Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have...

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Character – a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means.

Thought makes every thing fit for use.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know

The soul’s emphasis is always right.

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail

A little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams.

The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy,...

Our expenses are all for conformity.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed

Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.

Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other

It is only when the mind and character slumber that dress can be seen.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence