The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.

Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.

When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.