What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Live the life you've dreamed.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
That government is best which governs least.
How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Those whom we can love, we can hate to others we are indifferent.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
design, being good & life
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
health, life & motivation
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Be not simply good - be good for something.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Being is the great explainer.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Faith never makes a confession.
Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.
The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
The law will never make a man free it is men who have got to make the law free.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Things do not change we change.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
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.
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
I had three chairs in my house one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
environmental, God & men
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.