Every individual strives to grow and exclude and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds, after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting.

Women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour.