Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.

The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.

When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.