Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and so true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion.

How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.

The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line.

It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.