The quote database

The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.

At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance.

When we have been engaged in the preliminaries to living for about fifty-five years, we begin to think about slacking off.

My aim is to show that only an inappreciable fraction of our ordered and sustained efforts is given to the business of actual living, as distinguished from the preliminaries to living.

if your ordinary day's work is thus exhausting, then the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted

A man's powers ought not to be monopolised by his ordinary day's work.

Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot regain it?

So get out there. Give it everything you’ve got—whether it’s your time, your talent, your prayers, or your treasure.

You’ll never see a U-haul behind a hearse.

So I ask you today: How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes?

The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.

Life is not only short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing.

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.

We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

How to make the getting our living poetic! for if it is not poetic, it is not life but death that we get.

if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

It is not down in any map; true places never are

To grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power; and you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle.

These young people have had advantages of college, of European travel, and of economic study, but they are sustaining this shock of inaction.

Our young people feel nervously the need of putting theory into action, and respond quickly to the Settlement form of activity.

Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.