"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing."

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."

"The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one"

"There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle."

"It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no."

"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection."

"These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile."

"Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun."

"Skepticism is slow suicide."

"His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection."

"Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?"

"The best lightning-rod for your protection is your own spine."

"Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals."

"We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old — reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth."

"The activity of to-day and the assurance of to-morrow."

"Revolutions never go backwards."

"The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure."

"Self-command is the main elegance."

"The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, — men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority — demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice — comes graceful and beloved as a bride!"

"Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep."

"Nature is no sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons."

"Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere."

"The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the want of measure."

"Nature is the best posture-master."

"I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us."

"Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!"

"Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment."

"No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me."

"Self-trust is the first secret of success."

"His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong."

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose."

"The faith that stands on authority is not faith."

"Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right."

"Shallow men believe in luck."

"In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed."

"The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool."

"The virtues of society are the vices of the saints."

"If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 6."

"For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?"

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world."

"When Confucius and the Indian Scriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of... It is only within this century [the 1800 's] that England and America discovered that their nursery tales were old German and Scandinavian stories; and now it appears that they came from India, and are therefore the property of all the nations."

"[The Upanishads and the Vedas] haunt me. In them I have found eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken peace."

"The Indian teaching, through its clouds of legends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches to speak truth, love others, and to dispose trifles. The East is grand - and makes Europe appear the land of trifles .... all is soul and the soul is Vishnu ... cheerful and noble is the genius of this cosmogony. Hari is always gentle and serene - he translates to heaven the hunter who has accidentally shot him in his human form, he pursues his sport with boors and milkmaids at the cow pens; all his games are benevolent and he enters into flesh to relieve the burdens of the world."

"Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color."

"It is sublime as night and a breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics, which visit in turn each noble poetic mind .... It is of no use to put away the book if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the pond. Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently: eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence .... This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute abandonment - these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the beatitude of the Eight Gods."

"What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?"

"I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible"

"I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him."

"You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'"

"Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn of him."