I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.

We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep.