Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none.

Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees.

Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity.

There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.

When a man becomes a conformist, he is sacrificing the richness of independent thinking.