When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

The highest end of government is the culture of men.

Though we love goodness and not stealing, yet also we love freedom and not preaching.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.

A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.