“If the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if martyrs sang in the fire... for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract... their contented and inoffensive lives, why, at such a rate... better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding up.”

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

“There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.”

“I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully — and losing it — just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.”

“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.”

“...do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives”