The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.
The course of everything goes to teach us faith.
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.
As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.
Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.
The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
