“Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!”

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages... In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried”

“I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”

“Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”