Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.
Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.
The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it.
Earnestness alone makes life eternity.
Friend, hast thou considered the “rugged, all-nourishing earth,” as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much more her darling man?
Venerable to me is the hard hand, – crooked, coarse, – wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.
Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them.
The greatest of all heroes is One – whom we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man’s whole history on earth.
The great law of culture is, Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth; resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature be these what they may.
What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God’s name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that!
To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.
O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.
Good Christian people, here lies for you an inestimable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness, employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.
Rare benevolence, the minister of God.
A noble book! all men’s book!
A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.
There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.
The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.
Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.
Caution is the lower story of prudence.