If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again.

The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.

Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Great country, diminutive minds. America is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation.