Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.
When a man dies he kicks the dust.
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.
Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man’s will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.
All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads, – and then we can hardly see anything else.
The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.
The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experience.
The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.
It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.
It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.
If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil’s angels.
The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.