Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.
The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate.
Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.
Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.
When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house.
One should be always on the trail of one’s own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
In their daily life, all are braver than they know.
If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.
It’s only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.
As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter.