The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

All vigor is contagious.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.