For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction.

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?