In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.

The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.

The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.

Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.