Al David Quotes
What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.
For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.
A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
What a pity if we do not live this short time according to the laws of the long time,--the eternal laws!
It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses; and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way.
The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.
The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.
They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which would be more disreputable.
The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians', and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.
The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that theyare thieves.
The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?
Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.
Insane!... Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane?
The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.
The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.
I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.
We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.
The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.
We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.