It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.

I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.