Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.