Greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.

If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity.

The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.

Isolation must precede true society.