A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not cheap.

Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.