The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.

The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.