David Quotes
There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.
When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.
The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.
I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.
We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.
We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.
In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
