The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.

You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others.

There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.