Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear!

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.

The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.