No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.
Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature’s varied forms.
There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation – veneer isn’t worth anything.
Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.
We have become ninety-nine percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts.
If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you.
All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.
My purpose alone must be God’s purpose.
There is a use for almost everything.
All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.
Do what you can, with what you have, and do it now!
There are two ways, one is right; the other is wrong. If your work is only about right, then it is wrong.
One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don’t want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons.
We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He has created. I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one’s self.
Whatever you love opens its secrets to you.
When I touch that flower, I am not merely touching that flower. I am touching infinity. That little flower existed long before there were human beings on this earth. It will continue to exist for thousands, yes, millions of years to come.
It is simply service that measures success.
Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.
Learn to do the common things uncommonly well.
I think I’ll sleep now.