Ten percent of people can think, another ten percent of people think that they think, and eighty percent of people would rather die than be made to think.

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.

Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.

For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment.

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.