Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defiant though he look he has a helm which he obeys, which is he idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

I see it only that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the supreme being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

[on Thoreau:] He decided to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living.

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matter compared to what lies within us.

Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day.

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