We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.
I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste.
I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.
Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn? – to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.
Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another’s experience only by his own.
Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.
The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.
What means the fact – which is so common, so universal – that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Much is published, but little printed.
Any sincere thought is irresistible.
Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.
Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever.
How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.