All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible

The individual is always mistaken

The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.

We must be courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light

Every advantage has its tax.

Our strength grows out of our weakness

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

A field cannot well be seen from within the field.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines...

Our best history is still poetry.

A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion.

Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist

In the hands of the discoverer, medicine becomes a heroic art . . . wherever life is dear he is a demigod.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

Only that mind draws me which I cannot read.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of sympathetic life

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

‘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.