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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“We convince by our presence.”

“Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?”

“I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.”