A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.

That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline.

You never gain something but that you lose something.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for.

What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?