The sun is but a morning star.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.
As the Spanish proverb says, He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
We are all alike, on the inside.
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
You don’t create things, you discover things.
I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.
I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
