He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but, oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

The more you know the less you need to say.

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.

Do not rebuke mockers, or they will hate you; rebuke the wise, and they will love you.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I’ll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

I like surprises.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.