“I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.”
“The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.”
“The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.”
“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”
“If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.”
“To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”
“It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.”
“Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.”
“We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.”
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”
“We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.”
“As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.”
“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.”
“A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”
“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”
“If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.”
“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.”
“Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.”
“The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.”
“The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.”
“The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.”
“He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.”
“We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.”
“I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”
“We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.”
“In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.”
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”