We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Children are all foreigners.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.