Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.

The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his.

All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

But we need not fear that we can lose any thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end.