[To a woman who claimed she'd rather be dead than unconfined and unfashionable:] My dear, if you continue to lace as tightly as you do now, you will not long have the privilege of choice. You will be both dead and out of fashion.

Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. ... All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible.

A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.

But the truth is the highest consideration.

I think even lying on my bed I can still do something.