David Quotes
I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.
As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtlest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.
The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.
The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.
So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.
I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
Our last deed, like the young of the land crab, wends its way to the sea of cause and effect as soon as born, and makes a drop there to eternity.
As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.
The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.
He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.
We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
I defy anyone to produce any evidence that the word 'happy' has ever crossed my lips. I am not now, nor have I ever been, 'happy.'
No, I am a crier and if people ever saw me privately they would be shocked at what a bowl of mush I am underneath it all.
Letting go of the need to control things doesn’t mean letting go of responsibility. It means embracing life.
