To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost.
1mo ago
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
1w ago
1mo ago
It is not length of life, but depth of life. The man who has lived longest is not he who has counted the most years, but he who has most felt life.
1mo ago
The universe is wider than our views of it. Yet we should oftener look over the taffrail of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum.
1mo ago
We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.
2mo ago
It is not length of life, but depth of life. Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.
2mo ago
It is not length of life, but depth of life. The way to make life worth living is not to guard the hours, but to fill them — not to preserve the days, but to use them.
4mo ago
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period.
4mo ago
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
4mo ago
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius.
5mo ago
each point of E.'s statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge ever more complete or convincing, I could never hear the points better put — and then I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way.
5mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
Start saving quotes →