When once experience taught me that I could work when I chose, and within a quarter of an hour of my determining to do so, I was relieved, in a great measure, from those embarrassments and depressions which I see afflicting many an author who waits for a mood instead of summoning it, and is the sport, instead of the master, of his own impressions and ideas.

A Queen, or a Prime Minister's secretary may be shot at in London, as we know; and probably there is no person eminent in literature or otherwise who has not been the object of some infirm brain or another. But in America the evil is sadly common.

There have been few things in my life which have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of land.

influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.

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

Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life.

My own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.