The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.