A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Traveling takes the ink out of one's pen as well as the cash out of one's purse.

There is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science,is but a passing fable.

The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

The western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one.