 Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you? |
| Produce great men, the rest follows. |
| Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. |
| I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers. |
| Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me. |
| 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. |
| Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul. |
| The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. |
| There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe. |
| The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world. |
| The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws. |
| Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. |
| I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all? |
| Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. |
| Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. |
| And your very flesh shall be a great poem. |
| Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself. |
| And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death. |
| To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. |
