Love, and you shall be loved.
The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.
It is not the length of life, but the depth.
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
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.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
You become what you think about all day long.
Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn
In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain
In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.
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 ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none.
God offers to every mind a choice between repose and truth. take which you please--you can never have both. [Essay on Intellect]
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
Who you are is speaking so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying
The life of truth is cold.
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know the truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
Love what is simple and beautiful. These are the essentials.
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Every word was once a poem.
The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.
Language is fossil Poetry.
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.
All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.
Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship
To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.
He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
The years teach us much, which the days never knew.
The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Quotation confesses inferiority.
We are wiser than we know.
His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
Spiritual force is stronger than material force; thoughts rule the world.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.
This time, like all times, is a very good time - if we but know what to do with it
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.
The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature.
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God.
Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Books are for nothing but to inspire
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.
The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when all your arrows are spent.
We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.
A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.
Be an opener of doors
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
The years teach much the days never know.
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
A day is a miniature eternity.
Atom from atom yawns as farAs moon from earth, or star from star.
Time like space, is part of the permanent context of life. Time does not pass, we pass.
Oh, what have I to do with time?
The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power.
Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.
A world in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Oblivion here thy wisdom is,Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;For a proud idleness like thisCrowns all thy mean affairs.