You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

“Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.”

“No very black melencholy can come to he who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.....”

“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?”

“Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“AN ARTIST IS FIRST AN AMATEUR”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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”

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

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