Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.

Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.

The secret of success is concentration ... Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing.

Now we have no God. We have had two: the old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated, and never liked; the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see what he was made of - the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned. Now we have no God.

There's something beautiful about finding one's innermost thoughts in another.

How hard it is to make your thoughts look anything but imbecile fools when you paint them with ink on paper.

One has no right to form ideals of people, and then, because they don't justify them, become bitter.