Crete, Greece - 2006
1. "A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?"
2. "Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case."
3. “A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.”
4. “After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.”
5. "All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear."
6. “All good things are wild, and free.”
7. “All that man can say or do that can possibly concern mankind is, in some shape or other, to tell the story of his love - to sing, and if he is fortunate and keeps alive he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremeties. It is such a pity that this divine creature should ever suffer from cold feet. A still greater pity that the coldness so often reches to his heart.”
8. “All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.”
9. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
10. "A man sits as many risks as he runs."
11. “A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.”
12. "A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain."
13. "A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service."
14. “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
15. ”A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.”
16. "As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."
17. "As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I don't think much of that."
18. “As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not until the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.”
19. “As if we could kill time without injuring eternity!!”
20. "Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts."
21. "A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind."
22. “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.”
23. “A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”
24. "Being is the great explainer."
25. "Be not simply good; be good for something."
26. “Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
27. "Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love."
28. “Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.”
29. “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
30. "Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."
31. “Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution--such call I good books.”
32. “But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.”
33. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
34. “Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.”
35. "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."
36. “Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.”
37. "Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."
38. “Dreams are the touchstones of our character.”
39. "Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid."
40. "Even the best things are not equal to their fame."
41. “Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.”
42. "Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
43. "Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones."
44. "Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve."
45. "Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe."
46. “For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots.”
47. "For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it."
48. "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined."
49. "Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other."
50. “Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words?”
51. "Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them."
52. "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."
53. ”Heaven may be defined as the place which men avoid.”
54. ”He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical.”
55. "How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character."
56. “However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
57. "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. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in Paradise. Love your life."
58. "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered."
59. "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
60. "I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"
61. “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.”
62. "I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded."
63. "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone, I never found the companionable as solitude."
64. "If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to lead a life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
65. ”I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.”
66. »If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth, - certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.«
67. ”If... the machine of government... is such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
68. "If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness."
69. "If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment."
70. "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."
71. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
72. “I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
73. "I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude."
74. "I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you."
75. "I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found."
76. “In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”
77. “In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.”
78. "In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains."
79. ”I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
80. “In the long run men hit only what they aim at.”
81. "In wildness is the preservation of the world."
82. "In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.... We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams."
83. "I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."
84. "It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."
85. “It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”
86. »It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.«
87. "It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"
88. ”It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
89. “It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
90. “It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.”
91. “It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.”
92. “It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.”
93. “It is the man who determines what is said, not the words.”
94. "It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination."
95. "It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive."
96. ”It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.”
97. »I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, 'Your money or your life,' why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.«
98. »I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.«
99. »I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee and every one of you will take care of that.«
100. "I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision."
101. "I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
102. "Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven."
103. "Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."
104. »Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.«
105. "Let nothing come between you and the light."
106. “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.”
107. “Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air- to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.”
108. "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines."
109. "Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around."
110. “Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”
111. "Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream-world into reality."
112. "Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame."
113. "Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."
114. "Many men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they are after."
115. “Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.”
116. ”Men are born to succeed, not fail.”
117. “Men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
118. “Men have become the tools of their tools.”
119. "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
120. “My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.”
121. “My life is like a stroll upon the beach.”
122. "Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world."
123. “None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
124. "Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."
125. "Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice."
126. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”
127. ”Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”
128. "Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance:
they make the latitudes and longitudes."
129. "Of what significance are the things you can forget."
130. "Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them."
131. “Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced... You go to India and back, and the turtle eggs in your field are still unhatched.... empires rise or fall... One turtle knows several Napoleons.”
132. ”Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather, indicates, his fate.”
133. "Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somewhat unpleasant. But in the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness
all at once, like an atmosphere, sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine-needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again."
134. “Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.”
135. “Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify! Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.”
136. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
137. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.”
138. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all.
139. ”Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.”
140. "Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us."
141. "Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit."
142. “So, too, no doubt, Homer had his Homer, and Orpheus his Orpheus, in the dim antiquity which preceded them. The mythological system of the ancients, -and it is still the mythology of the moderns, the poem of mankind,- seems to point to a time when a mightier genius inhabited the earth.... Poetry is so universally true and independent of experience that it does not need any particular biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages to the genius of humanity and the gods themselves.”
143. "Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout."
144. »Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.«
145. "Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."
146. “That government is best which governs least.”
147. "That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
148. "That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess."
149. “The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.”
150. “The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity.”
151. "The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves."
152. "The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument."
153. "The eye is the jewel of the body."
154. "The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."
155. “The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.”
156. "The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that."
157. "The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I
thought, and attended to my answer."
158. "The heart is forever inexperienced."
159. "The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot."
160. “The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it.”
161. "The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency."
162. "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
163. "The question is not what you look at but what you see."
164. “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”
165. »The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.«
166. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
167. »The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.«
168. ”The perception of beauty is a moral test.”
169. "The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond."
170. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
171. “There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have naught to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an
existence which I have not procured myself. I speak as a witness on the stand, and tell what I have perceived.”
172. “There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
173. »There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.«
174. “There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me-- some of its virus mingled with my blood. No--in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one.”
175. ”There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
176. “There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind ... we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort ... All the world goes by .... Such clarity! obtained by such pure means! By simple living, by honesty of purpose.”
177. "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."
178. "The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue."
179. “The savage in man is never quite eradicated.”
180. "The stars are the apexes of what triangles!"
181. "The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly."
182. "The sun is but a morning star."
183. "The universe is wider than our views of it."
184. “The world is but a canvas to our imagination."
185. "Things do not change, we do."
186. "Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be."
187. "Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains."
188. "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."
189. "To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea."
190. "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
191. "To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
192. "To regret deeply is to live afresh."
193. “To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this sombre drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country o'er, the impression of inward comfort and sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature's English comfort.”
194. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
195. "Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."
196. "We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character."
197. "We are constantly invited to be who we are."
198. “We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.”
199. "We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected."
200. “We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
201. »We do not live our life out and full; we do not fill all our pores with our blood; we do not inspire and expire fully and entirely enough, so that the wave, the comber, of each inspiration shall break upon our extremest shores, rolling till it meets the sand which bounds us, and the sound of the surf come back to us. Might not a bellows assist us to breathe? That our breathing should create a wind in a calm day! We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.«
202. "We hate the kindness which we understand."
203. "We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another."
204. “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”
205. ”We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”
206. “We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”
207. ”We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a willow, and drew forth a melon for our refreshment, while we contemplated at our leisure the lapse of the river and of human life; and as that current, with its floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in review before us, while far away in cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine was proceeding still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, and the ebb always balances the flow. All streams are but tributary to the ocean, which itself does not stream, and the shores are unchanged, but in longer periods than man can measure. Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in generals.”
208. "We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground."
209. "We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described."
210. »We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.«
211. “We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!”
212. "What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?"
213. “What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
214. »Whatever of past or present wisdom has published itself to the world, is palpable falsehood till it come and utter itself by my side.«
215. “What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”
216. "What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life."
217. “What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.”
218. "What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?"
219. "What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
220. “What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,-for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
221. »When I hear a grown man or woman say, 'Once I had faith in men; now I have not,' I am inclined to ask, 'Who are you whom the world has disappointed? Have not you rather disappointed the world?'.«
222. “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
223. “When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, . . . I think Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.”
224. “When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
225. “Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
226. "Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring."
227. "Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience."
228. "You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can."
229. "Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads."
230. "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."
231. “You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.”
