The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.

The gates of thought, - how slow and late they discover themselves! Yet when they appear, we see that they were always there, always open.

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man.

Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal.