Beauty without expression is boring.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

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.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.

Every wall is a door.

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.

The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.

The years teach much the days never know.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Love, and you shall be loved.

When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your’re the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

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

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

You are constantly invited to be what you are.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up.

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Nature and Books belong to the eyes that see them.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

You become what you think about all day long.

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

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

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

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

The earth laughs in flowers.

Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

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

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.