quotes by Essayist Quotes

“I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen.”

“Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.”

“The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.”

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”

“But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.”

“My words itch at your ears till you understand them”

“My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.”

“Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.”

“All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”

“What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”

“The work for giants...to serve well the guns!”

“I have no wish to take life, not even human life”

“You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.”

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”

“Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.”

“We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.”

“The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.”

“A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.”

“My greatest skill has been to want but little.”

“We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others.”

“It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.”

“Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.”

“Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.”

“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.”

“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”

“The house is a castle which the King cannot enter.”

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.”

“The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.”

“To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”

“The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.”

“Only through suffering can we find ourselves.”

“A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.”

“I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”

“Life is our dictionary.”

“I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.”

“Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.”

“Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.”

“I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.”

“Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.”

“I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.”