Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

Your goodness must have some edge to it, -- else it is none.

Insist on yourself; never imitate...Every great man is a unique.

The force of character is cumulative.