There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.

He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.

Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land,... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.