We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.

Its the not the Destination, It's the journey.

If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none.

Practice makes perfect - the sooner you start, the sooner you will be a happy nonsmoker

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.