To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic.

Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.

A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.