"There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said."

"A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts."

"Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both."

"Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine."

"But if a man be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

"Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease."

"It facilitates labor and thought so much that there is always the temptation in large schools to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our modes of Education aim to expedite, to save labor; to do for masses what cannot be done for masses, what must be done reverently, one by one: say rather, the whole world is needed for the tuition of each pupil."

"A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches."

"Obedience alone gives the right to command."

"When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless."

"Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."

"The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all."

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

"We ascribe beauty to that which is simple which has no superfluous parts which exactly answers its ends."

"Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm."

"Out of sleeping a waking Out of waking a sleep."

"A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes."

"Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults."

"AH I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."

"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true."

"Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits."

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."

"The ancestor of every action is a thought."

"No sensible person ever made an apology."

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

"There is an optical illusion about every person we meet."

"Line in nature is not found;Unit and universe are round;In vain produced, all rays return;Evil will bless, and ice will burn."

"Only so much of life do I know as I have lived."

"Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows."

"Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die."

"The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief."

"A woman's strength is the irresistible might of weakness."

"If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead."

"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character."

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

"Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion."

"For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations."

"Extremes meet and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility."

"Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think."

"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."

"God had infinite time to give us.... He cut it up into a near succession of new mornings and with each therefore a new idea new inventions and new applications."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

"It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man having once shown himself capable of original writing is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion."

"With the past I have nothing to do nor with the future. I live now."

"The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"Hitch your wagon to a star."

"When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners."