I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. 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. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
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Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is er...
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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
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The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,—of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,—such health, such cheer, they affor...
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Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of a...
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The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Friendship
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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust cau...
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The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. --
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Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Friendship
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Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
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What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
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I've also always been fascinated by weddings... those surreal performances where the audience plays an integral part -- the joy, the sadness, the passion... all unfolding firstly in a house where God is served and ultimately in a house where beer is served... the knife inserted ritually into the virginal white cake to reveal the dark fruity interior... that ugly pagan concept of the father handing over his daughter to her new master... the mothers crying because they're losing a daughter, the page boys crying because they have to wear such stupid clothes... those embarrassing speeches and drunken uncles on the dance floor...
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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.
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Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
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On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
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I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
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The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
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While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.
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Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
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In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
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We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
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Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
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Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
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Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Sports
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