The quote database

Brothers and sisters we were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers.

For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man--in society--it must be unavoidably impure.

A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul.

The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.

The guaranties of civil liberty are but guaranties of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them.

When I saw them embracing each other, and heard their joyous laughter, I turned sadly away from the lovely sight.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.

The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter.

The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

depend upon it, you will love your native hills the better for being separated from them

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Tell all my friends in Concord that I do not send my love, but retain it still.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him--I should keep myself rather--at a more respectful distance.

The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!

At death our friends and relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further from us and are forgotten.

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices.

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

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

There are some days when we need a hand. There are other days when we're called on to lend one.

Communication is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession.

Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.