The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich.

We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.