‘Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up

The life of truth is cold.

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale ’til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are...

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven...

Don’t trust children with edge tools. Don’t trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world...

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your...

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy

Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel

Things said for conversation are chalk eggs. 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.

Do what you know, and perception is converted into character, as islands and continents were built by invisible infusories, or, as these forest leaves absorb light, electricity, and volatile gases, and the gnarled oak to...

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Some of your hurts you have cured, / And the sharpest you still have survived, / But what torments of grief you endured / From evils which never arrived!

To live without duties is obscene.

Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive

Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as...

The religions we call false were once true

Every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as experience.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life; nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that

A right rule for a club would be, Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised and shocked, who do and let do, and let be, who...

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.

A man is a God in ruins.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

The ancestor of every action is thought.

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

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

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

If he had the earth for his pasture and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy...

Scatter joy!

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs, “The Gods...

Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.