Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty..

I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; I would have each one be very careful to find out and preserve his own way..

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sinc….

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations..

The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids..

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years..

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that….

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves..

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude..

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to vee….

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago..

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present n….

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts..

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and….

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the….

Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite….

Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but after all, it wa….

To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better….

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, t….

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character..