My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.

Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.

Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the black Nile that concerns us.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.