We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.

I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.