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A life without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth, with the fire dead, the laughter stilled and the light extinguished.
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
"He who mistrusts most, should be trusted least."
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
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.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
I never found the 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.
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
Good judgement comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Experience comes from bad judgement.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Let us endeavour to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
"Love conquers all."
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
Le sens commun n'est pas si commun.
All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about"
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Few of our ancestors were perfect ladies and gentlemen; the majority, in fact, weren't even mammals.
God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing.
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first. When you learn to live for others, they will live for you.
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