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.

It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.

There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

To be a man is to be a nonconformist.