That government is best which governs least.
Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Goodness is the only investment which never fails.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature – if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you – know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.
Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.
Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
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