We go to Europe to be Americanized.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I’ve done. But I’m telling you honestly that it doesn’t surprise me. I knew I could do it.

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestions, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement, a selecting principle, gathering his like unto him wherever he goes. What you are comes to you.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry

A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

All men in the abstract are just and good

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong

How painful to give a gift to any person of sensibility, or of equality! It is next worst to receiving one

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is: Let there be truth between us two forevermore

Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us