“The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government”

The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.

“We may talk what we please,” he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, “of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles

It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, But too great weight and largeness of his head.

Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.

Let’s banish business, banish sorrow; To the gods belong to-morrow.

The liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man’s, into the world, as it is God’s.

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.

Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.

Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine!

Our yesterday’s to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrow draw out all our store, Till the exhausted well can yield no more.

Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once past by, is bald behind.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.

Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

Poor people don’t like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don’t like to think of themselves as poor.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation.

We believe in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves.

Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men and women are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves.