"I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue."

"Never read any book that is not a year old."

"Nothing can be preserved that is not good."

"Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age."

"Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it."

"A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal."

"Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration."

"Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun."

"The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most."

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."

"Hitch your wagon to a star."

"There is no knowledge that is not power."

"We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

"Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."

"'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear."

"Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines."

"A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," — "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day.""

"Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days."

"Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?"

"The days .... come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away."

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."

"The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs."

"We boil at different degrees."

"God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth."

"Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die."

"And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide."

"And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form."

"What potent blood hath modest May!"

"A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays."

"Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!"

"The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech."

"Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow."

"In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part."

"They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings."

"Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame."

"If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again."

"Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "'T is man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die.""

"Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime."

"It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!"

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands."

"For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates."

"Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great."

"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill."

"He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread."

"Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm."