Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
My greatest skill in life has been to want but little.
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.
The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
We are constantly invited to be who we are.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.