“I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, anymore than I would have every acre of earth cultivated.”
“Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.”
“Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state...”
“How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.”
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”
“I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”
“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”