“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”

“Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.”

“As long as possible live free and uncommitted.”

“Man is the artificer of his own happiness.”

“I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.”

“But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.”

“If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.”

“God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.”

“Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. ”

“A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.”

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

“The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these."I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live.”

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

“This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.”

“Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.”

“So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.”

“I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.”

“Lee los mejores libros primero; lo más seguro es que no alcances a leerlos todos.”

“You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.”

“Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.”

“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar”

“The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”

“To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.”

“As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me.”

“God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.”

“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.”

“If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.”

“A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.”

“What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”

“You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body”

“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of feeble minds”

“There is no remedy for love but to love more."

“I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.”

“Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel the cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.”

“I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.”

“We have become the tool of our tools.”

“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.”

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

“Men have become the tools of their tools. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.”

“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”

“I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.”

“Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.”

“I love a broad margin to my life.”

“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?”