All nature is but art unknown to thee.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Knowledge is true opinion.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

The good is the beautiful.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?