He listens equally to the prayers of the believer and the unbeliever.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

The Heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.