“
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
“
I have never found a 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.
“
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
“
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
“
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.
“
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
“
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
“
May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
“
Those whom we can love, we can hate to others we are indifferent.
“
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
“
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
“
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
“
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
“
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
“
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
“
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
“
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
“
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
“
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
“
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.