All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.
We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
Methinks that the moment my legs began to move, my thoughts began to flow.
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
My profession is to always find God in nature.
Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her!
Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.
I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.
I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.