The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.

Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins.

Christ certainly did come to destroy the law and the prophets.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.

What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.