As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissible, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

For all have not the gift of martyrdom.

Singularity in the right hath ruined many; happy those who are convinced of the general opinion.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.