Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.

A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.

Could Shakespeare give a theory of Shakespeare?

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.

Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.

The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.