Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.