Quote collection
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"Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there."
"Books are a triviality. Life alone is great."
"The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth."
"Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you."
"The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable."
"In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it."
"History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what may be called thought."
"Eyes bright, with many tears, behind them."
"The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble."
"How great a Possibility, how small a realized Result."
"Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities."
"All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them."
"Doubt of any kind cannot be resolved except by action."
"Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite... Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: It is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves."
"What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?"
"Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own."
"No country can find eternal peace and comfort where the vote of Judas Iscariot is as good as the vote of the Saviour of mankind."
"The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life."
"There is something in man which your science cannot satisfy."
"In a certain sense all men are historians."