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

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.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

The days .... come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.

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

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

England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.

United States! the ages plead, — Present and Past in under-song, — Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.

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

Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm.

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

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.

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.

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."

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.

It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

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

Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great.

To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

The gods sell anything to everybody at a fair price.

The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

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.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, and no force of character can make any stand against good wit.

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

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.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

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

There are men who astonish and delight, men who instruct and guide. Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

To live without duties is obscene.

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

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.

Now shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and the existing generation is invalided and degenerate? ... A more subtle and severe criticism might suggest that some dislocation has befallen the race; that men are off their centre; that multitudes of men do not live with Nature, but behold it as exiles. People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in the world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority.

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