A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

The first wealth is health.

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

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre.

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Our strength grows out of our weakness.

The years teach much which the days never know. 

What you are comes to you.

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Sprinkle joy.

Truth is our element.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. 

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle.

The way of life is wonderful. It is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

‘This not important how the hero does this or that, but what he is.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he work,—a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,—if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence on every side.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.