Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.

The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.

This is the value of the Communities; not what they have done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.

For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best 

That all the wine at once we swallow 

And lees make all the rest.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

There is a freemasonry among the dull by which they recognize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent tact in men of genius.

The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever." The delay of the Divine Justice - this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, - this was the soul of their religion.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth.

I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? - they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

Blessed are those who have no talent!

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set policy at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.