There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. |
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. |
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. |
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. |
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. |
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages. |
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. |
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify. |
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness. |
Simplify, simplify. |
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. |
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being. |
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society. |
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces. |
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. |
There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance. |
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. |
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. |
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high. |
Things do not change; we change. |