Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.

Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.

Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.