Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Every man has a choice between love of truth and love of repose. Love of repose brings him a solid reputation and peaceful life; love of truth keeps him in suspense. A man who loves truth respects the highest law of his being.

You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated.

Vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action.