I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already.

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events, and strong with their strength.

We live ruins amid ruins.

Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.

Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.