Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.

If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.

Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.

Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground.