March to the beat of your own drummer.

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts.

There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do not affect thegeneral illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them.

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.