As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

That government is best which governs least.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Faith never makes a confession.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.