If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Some suggestions for you :

Let us... work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe...till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake...

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

July 6. I wish to meet the facts of life—the vital facts, which are the phenomena or actuality the gods meant to show us—face to face, and so I came down here. Life! who knows what it is, what it does? If I am not quite right here, I am less wrong than before; and now let us see what they will have.

Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.