“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.”

“The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.”

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”

“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.”

“My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax; no levelled malice Infects one comma in the course I hold, But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.”

“Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.”

“Boldness be my friend.”

“To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,And so your follies fight against yourself.Fear, and be slain--so worse can come to fight;And fight and die is death destroying death,Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.”

“Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back.”

“But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.”

“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.”

“The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”

“The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.”

“Even through the hollow eyes of deathI spy life peering.”

“Be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss . . . . then wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“Things at the worst will cease or else climb upward To what they were before.”

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”

“If you wait until all the lights are 'green' before you leave home, you'll never get started on your trip to the top.”

“If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?”