“Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!Smile, for your lover comes!”

“Either define the moment or the moment will define you.”

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, / I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”

“I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.”

“A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing lacking.”

“But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame.”

“Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual”

“I think that the heroism which at this day would make on us the impression of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a domestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and Fashion, and show men how to lead a clean, handsome and heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our cities and villages; whoso shall teach me how to eat my meat and take my repose and deal with men, without any shame following, will restore the life of man to splendor, and make his own name dear to all history.”