Al David Quotes

I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.

There is considerable danger that a man will be crazy between dinner and supper; but it will not directly answer any good purposethat I know of, and it is just as easy to be sane.

In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory.

The inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.

Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.

The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.

It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.

The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.

I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.

The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.

We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.

Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.

A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.

I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.

When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.

Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.

I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is...

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

What youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside.

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.

They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.

Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is, in this sense, a hospital.