The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country ... There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.

Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.

[On being deaf:] We must struggle for whatever may be had, without encroaching on the comfort of others.

it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.

I saw no poor men, except a few intemperate ones. I saw some very poor women; but God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. It is characteristic of genius to break up the artificial arrangements of conventionalism, and to view mankind in true perspective, in their gradations of inherent rather than of adventitious worth. Genius is therefore essentially democratic, and has always been so.

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work