Al David Quotes
The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.
The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.
The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.
Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.
Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.
We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made
You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me.
We saw men haying far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike.
The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.
Having reached the term of his natural life"; Mwould it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural life?
Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it.
The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased.
Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.