583 quotes
The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.
Life and Letters in New England (1867)
Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
Society and Solitude (1870)
If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
Journals (1822)
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Society and Solitude (1870)
A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
Letters and Social Aims (1876)
Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world.
He thought it happier to be dead,
To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.
The American Scholar (1837)
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)
Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
Poems (1847)
When we consider what is our thought of God we find that it is our own soul stripped of all inferiority and carried out to perfection.
Sermon 86 (1830)
The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
Society and Solitude (1870)
And every man, in love or pride,
Of his fate is ever wide.
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.