To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

That we have but little faith is not sad, but that we have little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned.

Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.