Quotes About Community

One chair for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.

Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.

It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve?

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

Society is commonly too cheap.

Still we live meanly like ants.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us.

The tavern will compare favorably with the church.

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

I mean that they should not play life or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

Nor wars did men molest, When only beechen bowls were in request.

Je souhaiterais rappeler à mes compatriotes qu'il sont avant tout des hommes, et qu'ils ne sont des Américains qu'en second lieu. Qu'importe une loi qui protège vos biens et qui préserve votre âme et votre corps, si elle ne vous maintient pas dans les rangs du genre humain.

O convívio social, geralmente, é banal demais

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

Wir sind meistens einsamer, wenn wir uns unter Menschen begeben, als wenn wir in unseren Zimmern bleiben.