The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.

Genius appeals to the future.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and largercircles, and that without end.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior...

Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.