For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave.

Lose the world, get lost in it, and find your soul.

In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.