He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

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.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

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.

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Time stays, we go.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

The brain is wider than the sky.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

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