There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him.
Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most s...
It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is a...
Wildness is the preservation of the World.
The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.
No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.
Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.
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.
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came i...
Even voting is nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the...
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.
As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Life in us is like the water in a river.
The world is but a canvas for our imagination
The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself...