It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
No man ever followed his genius til it misled him.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body.
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
A man can suffocate on courtesy.
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.
As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me.
Renew thyself completely each day.