Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herbert V. Prochnow

You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you'll find - you're never sorry you were kind.

Herbert Spencer

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

Herbert Spencer

Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints.

Herbert Spencer

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Herman Melville

When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

Herman Melville

None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.

Herman Melville

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Herman Melville

We die, because we live.

Herman Melville

We die of too much life.

Herman Melville

At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.

Herman Melville

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

Herman Melville

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

Herman Melville

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

Herb Kelleher

I learned it by doing it, and I was scared to death.

Herb Caen

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

Henry David Thoreau

I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.

Henry David Thoreau

But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.

Henry David Thoreau

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

Henry David Thoreau

Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.

Henry David Thoreau

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

Henry David Thoreau

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.

Henry David Thoreau

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

Henry David Thoreau

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

Henry David Thoreau

Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.

Henry David Thoreau

We do not live by justice, but by grace.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough that our life is an easy one. We must live on the stretch, retiring to our rest like soldiers on the eve of a battle, looking forward to the strenuous sortie of the morrow.

Henry David Thoreau

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

Henry David Thoreau

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.

Henry David Thoreau

The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,--chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.

Henry David Thoreau

I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.

Henry David Thoreau

This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

Henry David Thoreau

I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.

Henry David Thoreau

The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.