We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.