Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
Dislike of another's opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.
We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.
A damn independent boy; independent as a hog on ice.
A hero without faults is like an omelet without little bits of eggshell in it.
Give me a wave I can ride upon, come and show your strength to me.
There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.