“The fault-finder will find fault even in paradise.”

“By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.”

“I was determined to know beans.”

“There is more day left to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

“My practice is “nowhere”, my opinion is here.”

“Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”

“We should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with their liberal allowance of time.”

“We must look for a long time before we can see.”

“Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.”

“The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.”

“I will not through humility become the devil's attorney”

“I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”

“I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.”

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”

“I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.”

“As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements'; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance.”

“It's circumstantial evidence, like finding a trout in the milk.”

“If ever I was sure that someone was coming to help me, I should run like hell.”

“If ever I was sure that someone was coming to help me, I should run like hell.”

“It is hard to forget that which it is worse than useless to remember.”

“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”

“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.”

“The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”

“It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”

“The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like

“Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”

“A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.”

“No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.”

“Where shall we look for standard English but to the words of a standard man?”

“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.”