Quotations and Poems

» Acceptance » “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”

» Achievement » “Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.”

» Achievement » “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

» Achievement » “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

» Action » “There is a tendency for things to right themselves.”

» Action » “Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.”

» Action » “We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.”

» Action » “Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.”

» Action » “The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.”

» Action » “The ancestor of every action is thought.”

» Action » “Real action is in silent moments.”

» Action » “Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.”

» Action » “Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.”

» Action » “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”

» Action » “Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.”

» Action » “A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.”

» Action » “We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”

» Adventure » “The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.”

» Adversity » “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine”

» Adversity » “A man is a god in ruins.”

» Adversity » “Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.”

» Affection » “The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.”

» Age and Aging » “Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.”

» Age and Aging » “We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.”

» Aid and Assistance » “We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.”

» Alcohol and Alcoholism » “There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.”

» Ambition » “Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

» America » “I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”

» America » “In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.”

» America » “We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.”

» Amusement » “The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.”

» Ancestry » “Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.”

» Angels » “The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”

» Anger » “For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

» Anger » “We boil at different degrees.”

» Anger » “A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.”

» Animals » “Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?”

» Appearance » “‘Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.”

» Applause » “The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.”

» Army and Navy » “The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.”

» Arts and Artists » “Every artist was first an amateur.”

» Arts and Artists » “The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.”

» Arts and Artists » “The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.”

» Arts and Artists » “Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.”

» Arts and Artists » “The true poem is the poet’s mind.”

» Arts and Artists » “New arts destroy the old.”

» Arts and Artists » “Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.”

» Arts and Artists » “Artists must be sacrificed to their art.”

» Arts and Artists » “Art is the path of the creator to his work.”

» Arts and Artists » “Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.”

» Arts and Artists » “Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing –to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”

» Attitude » “To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”

» Autobiography » “It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”

» Babies » “Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.”

» Beauty » “A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.”

» Beauty » “As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.”

» Beauty » “Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.”

» Beauty » “Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.”

» Beauty » “Beauty rests on necessities.”

» Beauty » “The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.”

» Beauty » “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.”

» Beginning » “The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.”

» Belief » “All the great ages have been ages of belief.”

» Belief » “Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.”

» Belief » “We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”

» Bereavement » “The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”

» Bigotry » “Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.”

» Biography » “Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.”

» Biography » “There is properly no history; only biography.”

» Books and Reading » “Never read any book that is not a year old.”

» Books and Reading » “We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.”

» Books and Reading » “‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.”

» Books and Reading » “There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”

» Books and Reading » “Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.”

» Books and Reading » “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

» Books and Reading » “Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.”

» Books and Reading » “Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

» Bragging » “If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.”

» Bragging » “There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.”

» Business » “Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.”

» Business » “The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent — for every effect a perfect cause — and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.”

» Calamity » “Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.”

» Censorship » “Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”

» Change » “People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.”

» Character » “Do what you know and perception is converted into character.”

» Character » “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 is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.”

» Character » “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”

» Character » “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”

» Character » “Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.”

» Character » “No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

» Character » “Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.”

» Character » “A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.”

» Character » “Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.”

» Charity » “Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.”

» Charity » “Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.”

» Cheerfulness » “So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.”

» Children » “The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions –an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.”

» Children » “There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.”

» Choice » “Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.”

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

» Cities and City Life » “Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.”

» Cities and City Life » “Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.”

» Cities and City Life » “The city is recruited from the country.”

» Civilization » “As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.”

» Civilization » “Civilization depends on morality.”

» Civilization » “Civilization depends on morality.”

» Civilization » “Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.”

» Classics » “There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.”

» Colleges and Universities » “One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.”

» Colleges and Universities » “The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.”

» Colleges and Universities » “Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.”

» Comedy and Comedians » “The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.”

» Commitment » “All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.”

» Common Sense » “Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.”

» Common Sense » “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”

» Communication » “When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.”

» Compensation » “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”

» Complaints and Complaining » “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, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.”

» Conceit » “Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, ”If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?”

» Conflict » “We are the prisoners of ideas.”

» Conflict » “We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves…”

» Conformity » “One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.”

» Consequences » “All successful men have agreed in one thing — they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.”

» Conservatives » “All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.”

» Conservatives » “Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.”

» Consistency » “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

» Contradiction » “Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.”

» Contradiction » “Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

» Control » “As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

» Control » “As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

» Control » “Nothing external to you has any power over you.”

» Conventionality » “He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.”

» Conversation » “In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.”

» Conversation » “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.”

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

» Country » “Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.”

» Courage » “Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.”

» Courage » “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

» Courage » “A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”

» Courage » “Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.”

» Courage » “Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.”

» Courage » “What a new face courage puts on everything!”

» Courage » “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”

» Courtesy » “Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.”

» Courtesy » “Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.”

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

» Crafts » “It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.”

» Creativity » “That which builds is better than that which is built.”

» Creeds » “As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.”

» Crime and Criminals » “Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.”

» Crime and Criminals » “Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.”

» Critics and Criticism » “Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.”

» Critics and Criticism » “Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.”

» Critics and Criticism » “Blame is safer than praise.”

» Culture » “Culture is one thing and varnish is another.”

» Curiosity » “Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.”

» Curses » “Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

» Cynics and Cynicism » “Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.”

» Cynics and Cynicism » “A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.”

» Danger » “One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”

» Danger » “The most dangerous thing is illusion.”

» Danger » “As soon as there is life there is danger.”

» Danger » “The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.”

» Debt » “It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”

» Decisions » “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

» Dependence » “The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.”

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

» Desire » “There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.”

» Destiny » “Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.”

» Destiny » “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

» Diets and Dieting » “‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.”

» Diets and Dieting » “‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.”

» Difficulties » “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”

» Difficulties » “Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?”

» Difficulties » “There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.”

» Difficulties » “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

» Disasters » “The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.”

» Discipline » “Self-command is the main discipline.”

» Discovery » “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.”

» Disease » “All diseases run into one. Old age.”

» Dissatisfaction » “There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, ”Anywhere but here.””

» Dress » “I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.”

» Drugs » “Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

» Duty » “Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”

» Economy and Economics » “Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.”

» Education » “I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.”

» Education » “Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”

» Education » “The secret in education lies in respecting the student.”

» Education » “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.”

» Education » “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 schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.”

» Eloquence » “The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.”

» Empire » “An empire is an immense egotism.”

» Energy » “Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”

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

» Enthusiasm » “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

» Enthusiasm » “Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

» Enthusiasm » “Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.”

» Envy » “Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.”

» Equality » “Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.”

» Exaggeration » “There is no one who does not exaggerate!”

» Exaggeration » “‘Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.”

» Example » “The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.”

» Excellence » “There is always a best way of doing everything.”

» Excellence » “There is always a best way of doing everything.”

» Exercise » “Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.”

» Exercise » “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.”

» Expectation » “How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

» Experience » “Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.”

» Experience » “The more experiments you make the better.”

» Extra Mile » “I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.”

» Eyes » “The eye is easily frightened.”

» Eyes » “The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.”

» Faces » “A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.”

» Facts » “No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.”

» Facts » “Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.”

» Facts » “Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.”

» Faith » “All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

» Faith » “Our faith comes in moments… yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.”

» Faith » “The course of everything goes to teach us faith.”

» Faith » “The faith that stands on authority is not faith.”

» Fame » “Fame is proof that the people are gullible.”

» Farming and Farmers » “The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.”

» Fate » “Whatever limits us we call fate.”

» Fate » “If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.”

» Fate » “Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”

» Faults » “A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.”

» Fear » “Always do what you are afraid to do.”

» Fear » “Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.”

» Fear » “Fear always springs from ignorance.”

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

» Finance » “We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.”

» Flowers » “Earth laughs in flowers.”

» Flowers » “Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.”

» Focus » “The only prudence in life is concentration.”

» Focus » “Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.”

» Food and Eating » “I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.”

» Food and Eating » “Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.”

» Fortune » “Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.”

» Freedom » “For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?”

» Freedom » “So far as a person thinks; they are free.”

» Freedom » “Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.”

» Freedom » “Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.”

» Funerals » “The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.”

» Generosity » “It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.”

» Genius » “When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”

» Genius » “Accept your genius and say what you think.”

» Genius » “A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.”

» Genius » “Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.”

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

» Genius » “Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.”

» Genius » “The greatest genius is the most indebted person.”

» Genius » “The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.”

» Genius » “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.”

» Gentlemen » “Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman — repose in energy.”

» Gifts » “The only gift is a portion of thyself.”

» Goals » “Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.”

» Goals » “We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”

» God » “The dice of God are always loaded.”

» God » “There is a crack in everything God has made.”

» God » “‘Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.”

» Good and Evil » “Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.”

» Goodness » “It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.”

» Government » “The less government we have the better.”

» Gratitude » “I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.”

» Greatness » “The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.”

» Greatness » “No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.”

» Greatness » “To be great is to be misunderstood.”

» Greatness » “The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.”

» Greatness » “A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.”

» Greatness » “The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.”

» Greatness » “He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.”

» Greatness » “Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”

» Greatness » “Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.”

» Guests » “My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.”

» Happiness » “To fill the hour — that is happiness.”

» Happiness » “Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.”

» Happiness » “I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.”

» Health » “Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness — an open and noble temper.”

» Health » “Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”

» Heart » “Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.”

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

» Heaven » “Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.”

» Heroes and Heroism » “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

» Heroes and Heroism » “Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.”

» Heroes and Heroism » “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”

» Heroes and Heroism » “The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.”

» History and Historians » “Our best history is still poetry.”

» Honesty » “Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.”

» Honesty » “It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.”

» Honor » “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

» Humankind » “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

» Humor » “There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.”

» Hypocrisy » “At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”

» Ideas » “It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.”

» Ideas » “There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man. –”

» Ideas » “Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.”

» Ideas » “We are prisoners of ideas.”

» Idleness » “That man is idle who can do something better.”

» Imagination » “What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.”

» Imagination » “We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and our sentiments.”

» Imagination » “There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.”

» Imagination » “The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.”

» Imagination » “Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.”

» Imagination » “Science does not know its debt to imagination.”

» Imitation » “Imitation is suicide.”

» Immortality » “Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.”

» Impossibility » “Every man is an impossibility until he is born.”

» Individuality » “A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.”

» Individuality » “Our expenses are all for conformity.”

» Influence » “Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.”

» Influence » “The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.”

» Influence » “Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?”

» Inheritance » “Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.”

» Inspiration » “The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.”

» Instinct » “A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.”

» Institutions » “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”

» Integrity » “In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.”

» Integrity » “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.”

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “One definition of man is ”an intelligence served by organs.””

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.”

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.”

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.”

» Intervention » “Everything intercepts us from ourselves.”

» Intuition » “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

» Invention and Inventor » “Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.”

» Kindness » “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

» Kings » “If you shoot at a king you must kill him.”

» Knowledge » “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 study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.”

» Knowledge » “Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.”

» Knowledge » “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.”

» Knowledge » “Knowledge is the only elegance.”

» Language » “I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.”

» Language » “Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.”

» Law and Lawyers » “The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.”

» Law and Lawyers » “The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.”

» Law and Lawyers » “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.”

» Law and Lawyers » “Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

» Law and Lawyers » “The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.”

» Leaders and Leadership » “Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.”

» Leaders and Leadership » “The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.”

» Leaders and Leadership » “The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.”

» Leaders and Leadership » “We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.”

» Learning » “In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.”

» Learning » “No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.”

» Learning » “The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.”

» Learning » “The years teach us much the days never knew.”

» Learning » “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.”

» Libraries » “A man’s library is a sort of harem.”

» Libraries » “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.”

» Libraries » “Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.”

» Lies and Lying » “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

» Life and Living » “Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.”

» Life and Living » “It is not length of life, but depth of life.”

» Life and Living » “Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.”

» Life and Living » “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

» Life and Living » “Life too near paralyses art.”

» Life and Living » “Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.”

» Life and Living » “The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.”

» Life and Living » “If we live truly, we shall see truly.”

» Life and Living » “Live, let live, and help live”

» Light » “Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.”

» Literary Criticism » “There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.”

» Literature » “People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.”

» Loneliness » “Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.”

» Love » “He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.”

» Love » “Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.”

» Love » “The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.”

» Love » “All mankind loves a lover.”

» Luck » “Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.”

» Luck » “There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.”

» Machinery » “By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.”

» Manners » “Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love –now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.”

» Manners » “Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.”

» Manners » “The basis of good manners is self-reliance.”

» Manners » “There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.”

» Manners » “Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.”

» Marriage » “Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?”

» Marriage » “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 he!”

» Martyrdom » “The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.”

» Martyrdom » “The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.”

» Masses » “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 them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.”

» Men » “Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.”

» Men » “Men are what their mothers made them.”

» Men and Women » “Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.”

» Mentors » “My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.”

» Mentors » “We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.”

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

» Mind » “He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.”

» Minorities » “Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.”

» Minorities » “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”

» Mobs » “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 right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.”

» Money » “The world is his who has money to go over it.”

» Money » “Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”

» Money » “Money often costs too much.”

» Money » “Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth, so much bread.”

» Money » “It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.”

» Morality » “The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.”

» Motivation » “If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.”

» Murder » “Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.”

» Music » “Music causes us to think eloquently.”

» Nationalities and Nationalism » “I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.”

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

» Nature » “We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.”

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

» Nature » “Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.”

» Nature » “Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.”

» Nature » “Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.”

» Nature » “Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.”

» Nature » “In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.”

» Nature » “Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.”

» Nature » “A man is related to all nature.”

» Necessity » “Necessity does everything well.”

» Necessity » “Make yourself necessary to somebody.”

» Necessity » “We do what we must, and call it by the best names.”

» Necessity » “By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”

» Nicknames » “No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.”

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

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

» Opinions » “Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

» Opinions » “The only sin that we never forgive in each other is a difference in opinion.”

» Opportunity » “Every wall is a door.”

» Opportunity » “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

» Opportunity » “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

» Opportunity » “Be an opener of doors.”

» Opposites » “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”

» Other People » “Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.”

» Parents and Parenting » “Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?”

» Passion » “Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.”

» Patience » “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

» Peace » “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.”

» Peace » “Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”

» Peace » “Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”

» People » “The people are to be taken in small doses.”

» Performance » “It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.”

» Persecution » “The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”

» Perseverance » “By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.”

» Persuasion » “That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.”

» Philanthropists » “The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.”

» Philosophers and Philosophy » “Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.”

» Plagiarism » “Genius Borrows nobly.”

» Planning » “To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.”

» Planning » “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.”

» Pleasure » “Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.”

» Poetry and Poets » “It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.”

» Poetry and Poets » “Only poetry inspires poetry.”

» Poetry and Poets » “Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.”

» Poetry and Poets » “Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.”

» Poetry and Poets » “Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.””

» Politicians and Politics » “There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.”

» Population » “If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.”

» Possessions » “Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.”

» Possibilities » “Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.”

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

» Possibilities » “The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

» Possibilities » “We have more than we use.”

» Poverty and The Poor » “Poverty consist in feeling poor.”

» Poverty and The Poor » “The greatest man in history was the poorest.”

» Power » “A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.”

» Power » “Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.”

» Power » “Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.”

» Power » “The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn.”

» Power » “The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.”

» Power » “There is no knowledge that is not power.”

» Power » “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

» Power » “Wherever there is power there is age.”

» Praise » “Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.”

» Praise » “When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.”

» Preachers and Preaching » “Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.”

» Preachers and Preaching » “The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.”

» Present » “Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.”

» Present » “Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.”

» Present » “Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.”

» Present » “Today is a king in disguise.”

» President » “The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”

» Progress » “All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.”

» Progress » “The walking of Man is falling forwards.”

» Property » “If a man owns land, the land owns him.”

» Property » “No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.”

» Property » “Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.”

» Purpose » “I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose…”

» Purpose » “Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.”

» Pursuit » “The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

» Quality » “The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.”

» Quotations » “Our best thoughts come from others.”

» Quotations » “The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.”

» Quotations » “The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.”

» Quotations » “He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.”

» Quotations » “The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.”

» Quotations » “Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.”

» Radicals » “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.”

» Reality » “You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.”

» Reform » “Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.”

» Rejection » “Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.”

» Religion » “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.”

» Respectability » “Men are respectable only as they respect.”

» Revolutions and Revolutionaries » “If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”

» Revolutions and Revolutionaries » “Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.”

» Rewards » “It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

» Rewards » “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”

» Riches » “Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.”

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

» Rumors » “We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.”

» Safety » “In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”

» Scholars and Scholarship » “I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.”

» Scholars and Scholarship » “The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.”

» Science and Scientists » “Do what we can, summer will have its flies.”

» Science and Scientists » “What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.”

» Sea » “The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… ”Beware of me,” it says, ”but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.””

» Security » “No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.”

» Security » “Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.”

» Self-esteem » “It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.”

» Self-esteem » “It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

» Self-esteem » “Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.”

» Self-expression » “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 possession.”

» Self-improvement » “The never-ending task of self improvement.”

» Self-improvement » “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 and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.”

» Self-love » “A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.”

» Self-reliance » “No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.”

» Self-reliance » “This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”

» Self-reliance » “Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

» Self-reliance » “The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”

» Self-respect » “Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.”

» Self-sacrifice » “Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.”

» Self-trust » “Self-trust is the first secret to success.”

» Sentiment » “Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists–talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.”

» Service » “No man can help another without helping himself.”

» Service » “He is great who confers the most benefits.”

» Silence » “Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.”

» Simplicity » “It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.”

» Simplicity » “Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”

» Sin » “That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.”

» Sincerity » “Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”

» Sincerity » “Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay,”

» Sincerity » “Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”

» Skepticism » “Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.”

» Sky » “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.”

» Slavery » “Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.”

» Society » “Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.”

» Society » “Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”

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

» Society » “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

» Society » “Society is a hospital of incurables.”

» Solitude » “Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.”

» Solitude » “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

» Solitude » “Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.”

» Solitude » “We never touch but at points.”

» Solitude » “We walk alone in the world.”

» Sorrow » “The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.”

» Sorrow » “Sorrow makes us children again.”

» Sorrow » “Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.”

» Soul » “The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

» Soul » “The soul’s emphasis is always right.”

» Speakers and Speaking » “All the great speakers were bad speaker at first.”

» Speakers and Speaking » “Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.”

» Speech » “Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.”

» Spirit and Spirituality » “The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.”

» Spontaneity » “Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.”

» State » “The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.”

» Strength » “We acquire the strength we have overcome.”

» Strength » “There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.”

» Stupidity » “The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is — Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.”

» Success » “There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”

» Success » “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

» Success » “If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

» Success » “A strenuous soul hates cheap success.”

» Success » “Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.”

» Sympathy » “Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.”

» Talent » “Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.”

» Talent » “Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.”

» Talent » “Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.”

» Talent » “Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.”

» Talent » “It is a happy talent to know how to play.”

» Talkativeness » “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”

» Taste » “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 gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.”

» Taxes and Taxation » “Every advantage has its tax.”

» Teachers and Teaching » “Knowledge exists to be imparted.”

» Teachers and Teaching » “The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.”

» Temper » “Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.”

» Temptation » “We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “To think is to act.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “Thought makes every thing fit for use.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “A man’s what he thinks about all day long”

» Thoughts and Thinking » “The revelation of Thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.”

» Time and Time Management » “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”

» Time and Time Management » “So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.”

» Time and Time Management » “The surest poison is time.”

» Time and Time Management » “These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.”

» Time and Time Management » “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

» Trade » “The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.”

» Trade » “We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.”

» Translation » “I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable — any real insight or broad human sentiment.”

» Travel and Tourism » “I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?”

» Travel and Tourism » “No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.”

» Travel and Tourism » “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

» Travel and Tourism » “Travel is a fools paradise.”

» Travel and Tourism » “Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.”

» Trust » “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.”

» Trust » “Self-trust is the essence of heroism.”

» Trust » “The highest compact we can make with our fellow is –”Let there be truth between us two forevermore.””

» Trust » “Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.”

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

» Trust » “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

» Truth » “All necessary truth is its own evidence.”

» Truth » “Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.”

» Truth » “Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.”

» Truth » “Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.”

» Truth » “The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.”

» Truth » “Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.”

» Ugliness » “The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.”

» Understanding » “No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.”

» Uniqueness » “Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?”

» Upbringing » “I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.”

» Valor » “There is always safety in valor.”

» Valor » “Valor consists in the power of self recovery.”

» Value » “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.”

» Victory » “Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.”

» Victory » “No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.”

» Victory » “The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.”

» Victory » “Wherever work is done, victory is attained.”

» Villains » “As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.”

» Virtue » “The virtue in most request is conformity.”

» Virtue » “The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”

» Virtue » “Weed — a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

» Virtue » “The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.”

» Virtue » “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

» Virtue » “The only reward of virtue is virtue.”

» Vision » “Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.”

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

» Voice » “A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.”

» Want » “Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.”

» War and Peace » “The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”

» Weakness » “Our strength grows out of our weakness.”

» Wealth » “Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.”

» Wealth » “The first wealth is health.”

» Wealth » “Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.”

» Will and Will Power » “The education of the will is the object of our existence.”

» Wisdom » “Life is a festival only to the wise.”

» Wisdom » “Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”

» Wisdom » “There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.”

» Wisdom » “Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.”

» Wisdom » “Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.”

» Wish and Wishing » “There is no beautifier of complexion or form of behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.”

» Wish and Wishing » “Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.”

» Wit » “Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.”

» Wives » “A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.”

» Women » “Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.”

» Wonder » “Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.”

» Words » “Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.”

» Words » “It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.”

» Work » “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. What business has he with an evil trade?”

» Work » “See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.”

» Work » “Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.”

» World » “The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not make a speech; he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.”

» Worry » “Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.”

» Writers and Writing » “There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.”