Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.

Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.