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

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

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.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.