Letting go is not giving up.
Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one’s destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.
I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.
We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.
