Quote collection
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"Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties."
"If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them."
"Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots."
"Genius is not a retainer to any emperor."
"The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality."
"I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think."
"When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers."
"Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world."
"The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind."
"We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not."
"I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints."
"I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another."
"A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him."
"It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired."
"What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?"
"It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself."
"The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur."
"The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation."
"Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her."
"How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden."