Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room ... Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when.

There is no death to those who perfectly love-only disappearance, which in time may be borne.

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order ... If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.

It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

I romanced internally about early death till it was too late to die early.