Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.

The less government we have the better.