“There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.”

“Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.”

“Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.”

“Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”

“We should impart our courage and not our despair.”

“To a philosopher all news is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

“Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.”

“Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!”

“There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.”

“What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.”

“No man ever followed his genius til it misled him.”

“I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”

“A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.”

“Read not the Times, read the Eternities.”

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

“As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

“A gun will give you the body, not the bird”

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life”

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”