I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
An early - morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imaged, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...simplify, simplify.
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. it does not clasp and pray to Jupiter.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fall immediately, they had better aim at something high.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so - called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Water is the only drink for a wise man.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
City life - millions of people being lonesome together.
Time is but the stream I go a - fishing in.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
The youth gets together this material to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance, a palace or temple on earth, and at length, the middle - aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place - a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of nature.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
If I knew...that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Events, circumstances, etc., Have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
We must have infinite faith in each other.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
How ofter we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
The eye is the jewel of the body.
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.
Things do not change; we change.
Gather ye rose - buds while ye may, old time is still a flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak, and another to hear.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
Colour, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
Politics is the gizzard of society. full of gut and gravel.
Where there is a brave man's in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.
Beware all enterprises that require new clothes.
What is morality but immemorial custom? conscience is the chief of conservatives.
We like that a sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.
After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
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