There are books... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Good nature is stronger than tomahawks.

A good deal of our politics is physiological.

In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock aswell as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt.