To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can't dishearten it.

To Be is to live with God.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.

It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.