We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.

Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him?

If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.

If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.