Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.