We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.

The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears to hear it.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.