Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature's self began to be; thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation's birth.
The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
Wisdom's self oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, where with her best nurse Contemplation, she plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings that in the various bustle of resort were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.
Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.
I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society - from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.
Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.
The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realization for many people...The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be.