It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

He who would be a great soul in the future, must be a great soul now.

If we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitoes.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme Good. Theuniverse is perforated by a million channels for his activity. All things mount and mount.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

A man should give us a sense of mass.