583 quotes
There is no true orator who is not a hero.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
A trip-hammer, with an Æolian attachment.
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.
Journals (1822)
The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
The American Scholar (1837)
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.
Divinity College Address (1838)
Whenever the true objects of action appear, they are to be heartily sought. Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.
Essays. Circles. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.
The American Scholar (1837)
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Essays: First Series (1841)
Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms.
The Natural History of Intellect, and Other Papers (1893)
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Society and Solitude (1870)
A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.
Society and Solitude (1870)
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.
Poems (1847)
The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.
Society and Solitude (1870)
Art and power will go on as they have done,—will make day out of night, time out of space, and space out of time.
You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.
The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.
Journals (1822)