The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.