Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better - quite happy - if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education.... On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.

If it were not for my firm belief in an overruling Providence, it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such complications of affairs, to keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that the Almighty has His plans, and will work them out; and, whether we see it or not, they will be the best for us.

Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.

If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature.

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.

Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.