If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

The three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.

Probe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

We are superior to the joy we experience.