Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or eventhe Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

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!

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.

That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living.