It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

I stand in awe of my body.

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.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.