And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

We are imprisoned in life in the company of persons powerfully unlike us.

I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though itwere only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

The first thing a great person does is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.