A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.
Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.
Dissent without action is consent.
Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.
Why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well as his horse?
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.
A fact may blossom into a truth.
You must speak loud to those who are hard of hearing.
Most, it would seem to me, do not care for nature and would sell their share.
Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar’s atmosphere.
You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.
If you’re familiar with a principle you don’t have to be familiar with all of its applications.
We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one.
Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.
We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time.
I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.
WE begin to die not in our sense or extremities, but in our divine faculties.
If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.