A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate betweenthem. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success would be the other's failure.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.

I have travelled a good deal in Concord.

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

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.