I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians', and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.

A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.

I think that every town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several, where a stick would never be cut for fuel, not for the navy, not to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses - a common possession for instruction and recreation.