Flowers . . . have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.

Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood.

There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.

Thinking cannot be clear until it has had expression-we must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flowers. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development-thought is the blossom; language is the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.

In regard to the great mass of men, anything that breaks the realm of fear is not salutary, but dangerous; because it takes off one of the hoops that hold the barrel together in which the evil spirits are confined.