Quote collection
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"Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground."
"There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole."
"People are very inclined to set moral standards for others."
"Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect."
"Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way."
"Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth."
"I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expect everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate good. . . . If we will take the good we find, . . . we shall have heaping measures. . . ."
"When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it."
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it."
"Almost every man we meet requires some civility; requires to be humored; - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me."
"The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work."
"The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded."
"The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck."
"Language is fossil Poetry."
"When there is no vision, people perish."
"What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find."
"There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer."
"Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era."
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide."
"Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, of the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board."