. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.

We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wildness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.