Quote collection
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us."
"When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left."
"I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house."
"Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?"
"When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple."
"Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments."
"I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves"
"Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe."
"Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance."
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
"True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance."
"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams."
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
"But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon."
"A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky."
"There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself."
"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."