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.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.

Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful - while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with - he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.