The complete collection
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on men's souls.
We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.
We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot.
My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious.
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised
Whatever moves me, whatever thrills me, is as a hand that touches me in the dark, and that touch is my reality.
My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life.
Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
The man who doubts it, can never have watched the first gleams of tenderness dawning in the clear eyes of one who loves; sunrise itself is a lesser marvel.
To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
Tell all my friends in Concord that I do not send my love, but retain it still.
The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!
My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.
Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.
Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.
Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children.
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.
I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh.