Every artist was first an amateur.

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.

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.

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."

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

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

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

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

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

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!

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.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfillment. 

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

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

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. Brahma, st. 1 Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressions are actually more indicative of the Hindu concept "Brahman"

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.

We boil at different degrees.

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow".

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

To live without duties is obscene.

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

Never read any book that is not a year old.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master at some point, and in that, I learn of him.

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

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

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.

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

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

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

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

Art is a jealous mistress.

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays.

That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

If a man own land, the land owns him.

The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.