There is certainly no defence or water -proof garment against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.

Travelers find virtue in a seeming minority in all other countries, and forget that they have left it in a minority at home.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.