There comes a time in each man’s education in which he comes to the conclusion that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society in in conspiracy against each one of its members.
Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself.
Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn; nature’s oldest force is as good as new.
All nobility in its beginnings was somebody’s natural superiority.
The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed, by, as a loss of power.
Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous handicrafts.
All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become big masters.
Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity.
Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.
Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature’s joke, and therefore literature’s. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world.
Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life, we must adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the intellect.
Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man’s habitual preference of the general good to his own; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.
Great thoughts ensure musical expression.
With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.
There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.
He that despiseth small things will perish by little and little.
I see my trees repair their boughs.