The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth

The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.

A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.