Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone… Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain.

In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.

Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature.

Every reform was once a private opinion.