Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.

Labor is discovered to be the grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles.

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion: Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.

War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.

A man in earnest finds means or, if he cannot find, creates them.

Our affections are our life. We live by them; they supply our warmth.

All that we do outwardly is but the expression and completion of our inward thought. To work effectively, we must think clearly; to act nobly, we must think nobly.