There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison, the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. They do not know how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.