I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees.

To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

We animate what we can see, and we see only what we animate.