The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in...

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, –/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you...

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves...

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and...

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of...

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

But if a man be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent...

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Live, let live, and help live

I see my trees repair their boughs

There can be no high civility without a deep morality

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility

The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake

There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

Love, and you shall be loved

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can’t make him let go

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

Today is a king in disguise.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his...

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to...

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Man is a god in ruins

Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

We walk alone in the world.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to...

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing...

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for...

Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the...

In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear!