He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Action

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Age and Aging

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

Bereavement

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

Books and Reading

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Caution

Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.

Character

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

Conflict

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

Conventionality

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

Critics and Criticism

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Desire

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

Distrust

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Dreams

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Emotions

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Experience

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Failure

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Faith

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Friends and Friendship

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

God

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Grief

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Health

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

Honesty

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Imagination

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Inheritance

To inherit property is not to be born -- it is to be still-born, rather.

Knowledge

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Leisure

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

Life and Living

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Love

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

Memory

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Money

The only wealth is life.

Morality

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Names

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Philosophers and Philosophy

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

Poetry and Poets

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Present

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Profits

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.

Purpose

Be not simply good; be good for something.

Reform

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

Respectability

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

Rules

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

Self-improvement

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Sensitivity

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Sin

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Solitude

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Speech

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Success

We were born to succeed, not to fail.

Taxes and Taxation

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Thoughts and Thinking

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Time and Time Management

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Travel and Tourism

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

Truth

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

Vegetarianism

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Voting

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Wealth

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Words

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

Work

Men have become the tools of their trade.

Writers and Writing

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.