Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction.
The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.
There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.
We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, – all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate.
We never conceive the greatness of our fates.
I suppose that the great questions of “Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute,” which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.
Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other’s privacy than their communion.
Objects of charity are not guests.
Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which would be more disreputable.
Hold fast to your most indefinite, waking dream.
No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians’, and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.
The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that theyare thieves.