Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man.

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.

Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. It is so well, that it is sure that it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power.

There are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really are. When the delicious beauty of lineament loses its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared, that an interior and durable form has been disclosed.