Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.