To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.
For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
A gun will give you the body, not the bird.
This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
We should impart our courage and not our despair.
Talk of mysteries! – Think of our life in nature, – daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, – rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.
Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest – lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.
I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.