We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again.

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.

Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.

Tools may be animate as well as inanimate; for instance, a ship's captain uses a lifeless rudder, but a living man for watch; for a servant is, from the point of view of his craft, categorized as one of its tools. So any piece of property can be regarded as a tool enabling a man to live, and his property is an assemblage of such tools; a slave is a sort of living piece of property; and like any other servant is a tool in charge of other tools.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, when it has reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. His will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of observation, which alone endows it with any real value; and also that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right abstract idea which belongs to it.

I'm lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth's last love. I will take life's final offering, I will take the last human blessing.

Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.

It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline.

Everything is ended if you forgive and forget.

Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.

Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as meditation can. The mind goes on jumping even in deepest sleep. Just those few moments in meditation your brain has almost stopped. ... You forget the body. ... You feel such pleasure in it. You become so light. This perfect rest we will get in meditation.

Regarding mutual tolerance: It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off.

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self - government.

The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.

Please go on, make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.

It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.

A knight whose heart is set upon the Way, but who is ashamed of wearing shabby clothes and eating coarse food, is not worth calling into counsel.

Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion.

A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.

A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.

The danger of our culture.- We belong to a period of which the culture is in danger of being destroyed by the appliances of culture.

To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply that the majority are unripe, andhave not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion.

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty.

As a result, nature is something entirely different from what comes to mind when we invoke its name.

We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

I will not live an instant that I do not live in love. Whoever loves does all things without suffering, or, suffering, loves his suffering.

Saints need sinners.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

None can lead this life who are not almost amphibious.

I don’t regret how much I love, and I avoid those who repent their passion.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

Bend and you will be straight.

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

The best sort of revenue is not to be like him who did the injury.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

If you desire healing, let yourself fall ill let yourself fall ill.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but rather in the reader's head.

It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone.