Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books.