The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us.

Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?