Quote collection
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"All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy."
"In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight."
"The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action."
"Much is published, but little printed."
"Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know."
"Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined."
"Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man."
"I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace."
"The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand."
"A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me."
"In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,--it is so much the more sensitive."
"My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought."
"The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time."
"What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man."
"Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good."
"What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array throughthe always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles."
"It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men.... This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth."
"In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine."
"The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world."
"We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced."