583 quotes
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.
Divinity College Address (1838)
There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing.
Poems (1847)
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Representative Men (1850)
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
Essays: Second Series (1844)
A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.
Society and Solitude (1870)
This perception is a sword such as was never drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from himself.
Life and Letters in New England (1867)
A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.
Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
Nature (1836)
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Society and Solitude (1870)
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature.
Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love.
Essays (1876)
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Journals (1822)
Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.
Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
Society and Solitude (1870)