A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.
And any fool will mind it.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
At death our friends and relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Viet Nam.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much of life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
You may cheat yourself out of much of life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office... I have never received more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
How trivial and uninteresting and wearisome and unsatisfactory are all employments for which men will pay you money!
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in the village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
I say that there are gods but they care not what men do.
I say, beware of enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
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 he hears, however measured or far away.
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
If I knew for a certainty that some man was coming to my house with the conscious intention of doing me good, I would run for my life.
If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter- we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad of instances and applications?
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.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
In the long run, men only hit what they aim at.
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
It takes two to speak the truth- one to speak, and another to hear.
Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance: they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Probably the finest travel book ever written by an American is Walden, though Thoreau only went a mile out of town.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
The gods can never leave a man in the world who is privy to their secrets. They cannot have a spy here.
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
The youth gets together the materials for a bridge to the moon, and at length the middle-aged man decides to make a woodshed with them.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Things do not change, we do.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
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. Employ your senses.
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
When a man dies he kicks the dust.
When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
Found 74 occurence(s) in 52,450 quotation(s).
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