Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now.

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.