Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can.

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.