All quotes

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

Nothing is more hidden from us than the illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

The man who doubts it, can never have watched the first gleams of tenderness dawning in the clear eyes of one who loves; sunrise itself is a lesser marvel.

To love, to dream, to feel, to learn, to understand--all these are possible to me if only I may be relieved from willing.

To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life.

What to the intellect is old and worn-out is perennially young and fresh to the heart; curiosity is insatiable, but love is never tired.

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

How to make the getting our living poetic! for if it is not poetic, it is not life but death that we get.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children.

Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours

If citizens do not like a law, their duty as honest men and women is to discourage its violation; their right is openly to work for its repeal.

The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

There is no short road to the realization of these aspirations.

any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.