Failure is the true test of greatness

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores;let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come.

Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.

Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our own peculiar political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal of universal equality and their grind-stone experience of the practical misery and infamy of poverty.