It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination

What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?

The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.

Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.

A nation may be ever so civilized and yet lack wisdom.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

Faith never makes a confession.