This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.