Al David Quotes

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.

Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.

As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?

What is commonly called friendship is only a little more honor among rogues.

It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.

The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

Oh, one world at a time!

In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.

We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.

The sun rarely shines in history, what with the dust and confusion; and when we meet with any cheering fact which implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it.

Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever soundingand resounding in the ears of men.

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

The researcher is more memorable than the researched.

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.

You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

It is not enough that our life is an easy one. We must live on the stretch, retiring to our rest like soldiers on the eve of a battle, looking forward to the strenuous sortie of the morrow.

Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.

Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.

If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary.

Commerce is really as interesting as nature.

The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.

Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.

Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.

Men will tell you sometimes that "money's hard." That shows it was not made to eat, I say.... Some of those who sank with the steamer the other day found out that money was heavy too.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.

I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.

The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes.

Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.