you can't escape tomorrow's responsibilities by evading it today

You have more of a feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps, I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid.

Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite

Dear Sir: Yours of the 24th. asking 'the best mode of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the law' is received. The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's Commentaries, and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chitty's Pleading, Greenleaf's Evidence, & Story's Equity &c. in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing.

I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.