583 quotes
Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
Journals (1822)
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
Poems (1847)
Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.
The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life.
The Natural History of Intellect, and Other Papers (1893)
The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.
Journals (1867)
Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see — not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.
Journals (1822)
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.
Representative Men (1850)
The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
A man may die by a fever as well as by consumption, and religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
Literary Ethics (1838)
The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.
Divinity College Address (1838)
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs, the trunk is carried along almost motionless.
Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.
Journals (1822)
We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.