There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

We can only obey our own polarity.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

It is sublime to think and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.