We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.