Nothing endures but personal qualities.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.

Produce great men, the rest follows.

Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.