[Economics is] not a “gay science,” I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one: what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science .

[ Commenting on Margaret Fuller’s remark, “I accept the universe,” ca. 1843 :] Gad! she’d better.

All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate , more important far than they all.

It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes the happiness or misery of him. Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that.

Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.