David Quotes

I did not know that we had ever quarreled.

In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies.

If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.

There is ripe fruit over your head.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter

My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.

Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

If we see nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as progressing, she is beautiful.

As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.

I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.

What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

I say, break the law.

In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.