No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; h e has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

The times are very bad. Very well, you are there to make them better.

In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.

Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?

Rest is for the dead.