All quotes

To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul

do not hope to excite love except by love

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him--I should keep myself rather--at a more respectful distance.

My saddest and most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Tell all my friends in Concord that I do not send my love, but retain it still.

The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference.

depend upon it, you will love your native hills the better for being separated from them

At death our friends and relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further from us and are forgotten.

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices.

Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!

Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed.

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer

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.

Our life is frittered away by detail

Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce or citizens elect what laws they will support.

Surely civilization is old enough, surely mankind is mature enough so that we ought in our own lifetime to find a way to permanent peace.

I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh.