The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them?

The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect.

There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you."

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.