“The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

“I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths, and skies and seas around. —”

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing to definite - only a sense of existence”

“The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.”

“It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.”

“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit comfortably on your shoulder.”

“We are a race of tit-men...”

“The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.”

“We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.”

“Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.”

“The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail.”

“We commonly do not remember that it is … always the first person that is speaking.”

“Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.”

“I am a parcel of vain strivings tied by a chance bond together.”

“How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?”

“Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.”

“It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.”

“There is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.”

“It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”

“I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

“This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.”

“lET HIM MARCH TO THE MUSIC HE HEARS”

“Keep pace with the drummer you hear, however measured or far away.”

“What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers?”

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

“Being is the great explainer.”

“There is no life but this.”

“The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.”

“Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.”

“I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians.”

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

“If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.”

“The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.”

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

“I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to the other”

“I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.”

“But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted.”

“It matters not where or how far you travel,--the farther commonly the worse,--but how much alive you are.”

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.”

“The attitude of resistance is one of weakness inasmuch as it only faces an enemy. It has its back to all that is truly attractive.”

“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”

“If I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame.”

“AN ARTIST IS FIRST AN AMATEUR”

“I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them.”

“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.”

“For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out 'twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.”

“You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.”

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”