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'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read...  
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pl...  
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind t...  
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.  
A fly is as untamable as a hyena.  
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by litt...   Politics
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.  
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.  
A great man is always willing to be little.  
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before...  
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes...  
A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits o...  
A man in debt is so far a slave.  
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principle...  
A man is what he thinks about all day long.  
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.   Friendship
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done som...  
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.   Nature
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effem...  
All diseases run into one, old age.   Age
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a s...  
All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not see...  
All life is an experiment.   Life
All mankind love a lover.   Love
All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud, you have fir...  
All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contra...  
Always do what you are afraid to do.  
America is another name for opportunity.  
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.  
Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poe...  
As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.  
As soon as there is life there is danger.  
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.  
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner ...   Science
Be an opener of doors.  
Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done som...  
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those t...  
Beauty without expression is boring.  
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.  
Between eighteen and twenty, life is like an exchange where one buys s...  
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.  
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.  
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one...  
Cards were at first for benefits designed, sent to amuse, not to ensla...  
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to liv...   Intelligence
Children are all foreigners.  
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the as...  
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.  
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.  
Concentration is the secret of strengths in politics, in war, in trade...  
Courage consists in the power of self-recovery.  
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.  
Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.  
Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shal...  
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path a...   Nature
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.  
Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all ...  
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an ex...  
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day c...  
Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish a...  
Earth laughs in flowers.   Nature
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-p...  
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was e...  
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.  
Every artist was first an amateur.  
Every burned book enlightens the world.  
Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His ...  
Every hero becomes a bore at last.  
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in him...  
Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.  
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.  
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.  
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.  
Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot ha...  
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.  
Every principle is a war-note. Whoever attempts to carry out the rule ...  
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, bu...  
Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done....  
Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is ...  
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.  
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.  
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolut...  
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, ...  
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.  
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.  
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; som...   Life
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all th...   Nature
Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.  
For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace ...   Anger
Genius always finds itself a century too early.  
Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you w...  
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.  
God enters by a private door into every individual.  
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take whi...  
God screens us evermore from premature ideas.  
Good men must not obey the laws too well.  
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.  
Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly dr...  
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard t...  
He builded better than he knew; the conscious stone to beauty grew.  
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equa...  
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who ...   Friendship
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret...  
Hitch your wagon to a star.  
How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquit...   Nature
I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling in...  
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.  
I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.  
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any pr...  
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading somethin...  
If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten ...  
If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can ma...  
If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better...  
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europ...  
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would me...  
If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.  
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can ...  
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they c...  
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.  
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only w...  
In the vaunted works of art, the master-stroke is nature's part.  
Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.  
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginni...   Marriage
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy ...  
It is not length of life, but depth of life.   Life
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be st...   Friendship
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can...  
It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the...  
It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always...  
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.   Dreams
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.  
Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passa...  
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persec...  
Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of liv...  
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.  
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.  
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.  
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.  
Make yourself necessary to somebody.  
Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.  
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept...  
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.  
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are m...  
Men are what their mothers made them.  
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.   Science
Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, an...  
Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other com...  
Money often costs too much.  
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken ...  
Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that s...  
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.   Nature
Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.   Nature
Nature hates calculators.  
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.  
New York is a sucked orange.  
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.  
Night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree.  
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.  
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.  
No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.  
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.  
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.  
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.  
Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of ...  
One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading a...  
Our best thoughts come from others.  
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we co...  
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when...  
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every tim...  
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained thr...   Peace
People only see what they are prepared to see.  
People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like ev...  
People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced...  
Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.  
Pictures must not be too picturesque.   Art
Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but th...   Nature
Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen t...  
Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, ri...  
Reality is a sliding door.  
Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infr...  
Revolutions go not backward.  
Science does not know its debt to imagination.   Science
Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abol...  
Self-truth is the essence of heroism.  
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.  
So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and s...  
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense...  
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.  
Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Other...  
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.  
Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls and to-mo...  
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on ...   Age
The ancestor of every action is a thought.  
The art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving,...  
The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion...  
The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their pres...  
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.  
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.  
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a dista...  
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and...  
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civil...  
The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the r...  
The first wealth is health.  
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the bes...  
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly s...  
The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusad...  
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.  
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.  
The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.  
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still tr...  
The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a ro...  
The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own p...  
The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?  
The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refus...  
The only way to have a friend is to be one.   Friendship
The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer ...  
The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The...  
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be hono...  
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.  
The reward of a thing well done is having done it.  
The secret of drunkeness is, that it insulates us in thought, whilst i...  
The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation; wh...  
The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.  
The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.  
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice,...  
The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the ...  
The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and ...  
The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.  
The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.  
The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that ma...  
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It i...  
The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how to look for the permanen...  
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting ...  
The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man...  
The years teach much which the days never knew.   Experience
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.  
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some...  
There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not stron...  
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, ...  
There is a tendency for things to right themselves.  
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the convic...  
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.  
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the w...  
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him t...  
They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first le...  
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they ...  
Think, and be careful what thou art within; For there is sin in the de...  
This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it enco...  
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to ...  
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no g...  
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry i...  
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and ...  
To be great is to be misunderstood.  
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in y...  
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This...  
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not ...  
To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole wor...  
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly...  
Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak ...  
Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends,...  
Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he c...  
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they wi...  
Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.  
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.  
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.  
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.  
Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.  
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, ...  
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you ar...  
Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation...  
We acquire the strength we have overcome.  
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.  
We are always getting ready to live but never living.  
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we r...  
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and...   Education
We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.  
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn ove...  
We are wiser than we know.  
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous pa...  
We do what we must, and call it by the best names.  
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the...  
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.  
We must be our own before we can be another's.  
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.  
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a...  
What you do speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.  
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, a...  
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.  
When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it   Nature
When the eyes say one thing and the tongue another, the practiced pers...  
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.  
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.  
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.  
Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.  
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.  
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.  
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will...  
You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who e...