The eye is easily frightened.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
Work is always an antidote to depression.
Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.
They have a right to censure that have a heart to help: the rest is cruelty, not justice.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Pain never really goes away; you just elevate and get used to it by growing stronger.
There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
Why harass with eternal purposes a mind to weak to grasp them?
We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
