I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

Why look in the dark for light?

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.

The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.