It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. But those who have a psssion for nature in the natural way, need no pictures nor gallereies. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist.
The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. ... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe.
Some have supposed that the mosquito is of a devout turn, and never will partake of a meal without first saying grace. The devotions of some men are but a preface to blood-sucking.
A man should fear when he only enjoys what good he does publicly. Is it not the publicity rather than the charity he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?
There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.
A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.
Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
Never excuse yourself.
The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.
Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication.
A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.
If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some Heavenly blessings.
The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; — and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward.
If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.
It is part and parcel of every man's life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty.
Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend and winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.
Trouble teaches men how much there is in manhood.
If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them.
It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.
Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.
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