Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.

The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.

Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences; but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.

As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.