Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self?

Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins.

And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.

I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be American before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?

People struggled on for years with 'troubles,' but they almost always succumbed to 'complications.

Make ones center of life inside ones self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity.