Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble.

The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.

Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.

A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.

Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.