Quote collection
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me."
"It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block."
"Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. 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."
"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."
"I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home."
"I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust."
"It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone."
"There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony."
"No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher."
"All men are children, and of one family."
"I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest."
"Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality."
"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
"Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe."
"All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers."
"Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics."
"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
"Simplify, simplify, simplify."
"The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July."
"I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul."