But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.