Only poetry inspires poetry.
The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.
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.
Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.
Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.
I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
All of our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.
If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.
It were better to be of no church, than to be bitter for any.
What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
Love is only one of many passions.
All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.
O imitators, you slavish herd!
By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.
