A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

In a certain sense all men are historians.

Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite... Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: It is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

Thought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain?

Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!