An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

The actual God of many Americans... is simply the current of American life.

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh...to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.

We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.