Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, andflatter and study effect only more finely than the rest.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison, the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. They do not know how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.