Life is our dictionary.

The one prudence in life is concentration.

Life is a progress, and not a station.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine. 

To fill the hour – that is happiness.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their aint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

All the good of nature is the soul’s, and may be had, if paid for in nature’s lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head allow.

I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new burdens.

I do not wish more external goods, — neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain.

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board.

Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men’s possessions, in all men’s affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your reactions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

‘Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that.

When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish.

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will come out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven. 

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely… but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.