quotes from classic

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

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Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

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The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased.

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Why care for these dead bodies? They really have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their owners were coming to the New World, as Columbus an...

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Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

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Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of a...

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Some men are judges, these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons a...

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Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

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Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for ou...

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I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, ther...

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The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

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I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. 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.

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If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel i...

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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

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A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him

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We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

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Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is er...

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It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

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I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.

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