Al David Quotes
The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.
Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.
If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.
On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.
To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, andflatter and study effect only more finely than the rest.
Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
A man who has to go to the village to get the news hasn't heard from himself in a long time.
The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.
A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more "harmonious compositions."
There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
Every sunset I witness inspires me with the desire to go to West as distant and as fair as that which the sun goes down. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
For in the wood these golden days Some leaf obeys its Maker's call. And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall.
If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.
It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.
Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.
There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them.
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.
Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.
