A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
The sticks break, the stones crumble, The eternal altars tilt and tumble, Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist About the amazed evangelist. He stands unshook from age to youth Upon one pin-point of the truth.
It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.
Ice and iron cannot be welded.
We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others.
To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.
If it comes to a swinging, swing all, say I.
The true success is to labour.
The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design.
You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese-toasted, mostly-and woke up again, and here I were.
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.
For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.
Strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the minds of men.
If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife.
Once I guessed right, And I got credit by’t; Thrice I guessed wrong, And I kept my credit on.
Youth is wholly experimental.
A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.
The very flexibility and ease which make men’s friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.
Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as simple and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail.
You’re either my ship’s cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap’n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!