“Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.”

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

If you’ve never eaten while crying you don’t know what life tastes like.

The deed is everything; the fame is nothing.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

And all must follow in my wake.

A person hears only what they understand.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.

Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

Books, the children of the brain.

The book of nature is a fine and large piece of tapestry rolled up, which we are not able to see all at once, but must be content to wait for the discovery of its beauty, and symmetry, little by little, as it graduallly comes to be more and more unfolded, or displayed.

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn.

The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible.

Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.