You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows….

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. It is characteristic of genius to break up the artificial arrangements of conventionalism,….

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and….

It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true..

it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are..

There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties. . ..

the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, wh….

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to preten….

influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth..

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring..

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare..

I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible..

We are not responsible for our feelings, as we are for our principles and actions. ... Our care, then, should be to look to our principles, and to av….

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties..

My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a posi….

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions..

The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these, none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the permane….

Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere w….

But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the natur….

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power..