What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.

There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.