Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.

The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation.

I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

A new degree of intellectual power seems cheap at any price.

Intemperance is the only vulgarity.