I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under-estimated.

Every calamity is a spur and a valuable hint.

Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.

The exceptional life depends not on working harder, but on different, even opposite, actions from habit and the crowd.