A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

It is said that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to establish.

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.

Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

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!