You are alive, so be fully alive.
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…
No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.
Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.
What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until they are in hot water.
Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.
Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.
Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.
If it matters, it will hurt like knives or wrap and lift you in the most immeasurable joy. Or both. One thing is certain, you will feel intensely alive.
No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
By indignities men come to dignities.
