Each moment of the year has its own beauty, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

The question is, whether suicide is the way out or the way in.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions...

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him...

Civilization depends on morality.

Language is the archives of history.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild...

A day is a miniature eternity.

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

The only true gift is a portion of thyself.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst…They are for nothing but to inspire.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at...

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Friendship demands the ability to do without it.

This time,like all times, is a good time, if we but know what to do with it.

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy

England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children

Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay.

Proverbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions.

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Every noble activity makes room for itself

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man...

The dice of God are always loaded.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade....

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of water; in male and female; in the equation of...

Conservatism is more candid to behold another’s worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. The Conservative

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half...

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

The poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him