There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Coal is a portable climate.

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

Make youself necessary to someone.

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

The intelligent have a right over the ignorant; namely, the right of instructing them.