Our best thoughts come from others.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

All mankind love a lover.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

America is another name for opportunity.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

We are wiser than we know.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

All diseases run into one, old age.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

There is always safety in valor.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Children are all foreigners.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

The first wealth is health.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Reality is a sliding door.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Every artist was first an amateur.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

What you are comes to you.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Nature hates calculators.

If a man can… make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Revolutions go not backward.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Beauty without expression is boring.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.’

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Money often costs too much.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

A great man is always willing to be little.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

The years teach much which the days never know.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Every wall is a door.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.