I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.
Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.
Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.
It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascinationfor all educated Americans.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so we are.
[W]e pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectrograph arrived, as cheated out of their human estate.
As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.