As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
Be an opener of doors.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to leave the world a better place, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.
Insist upon yourself. Be original.
My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.
When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.
How much of human life is lost in waiting.
One idea lights a thousand candles.
It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
We boil at different degrees.
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.
God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.
Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.