The Infinite Library

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

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

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

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.”

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

“Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.”

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

“The things taught in schools are not an education but the means of an education.”

“Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.”

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

“You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.”

“How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.”

“Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”

“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”

“Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere.”

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

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

“When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility, which religion is powerless to bestow.”

“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both.”

“Books are for nothing but to inspire”

“But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”

“Love, and you shall be loved.”

“If you shoot at a king you must kill him.”

“The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.”

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

“We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.”

“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it--else it is none.”

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.”

“Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.”

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

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

“When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”

“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

“Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.”