“If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.”

“A great mind must be androgynous.”

“No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”

“You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.”

“The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.”

“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.”