The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

He who owns little is little owned.

Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.