No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.
All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.
Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.
Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.
The great hope of society is in individual character.
Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.
He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a life-time is unraveled.
Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.
The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal.
Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
