Culture, like the kingdom of heaven, lies within us, and not in foreign galleries and books.

A man with few friends is only half-developed; there are whole sides of his nature which are locked up and have never been expressed. He cannot unlock them himself, he cannot even discover them; friends alone can stimulate him and open him.

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear.

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.

All we can ever do in the way of good to people is to encourage them to do good to themselves.