Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.

There is no point where art so nearly touches nature as when it appears in the form of words.

A man who in the struggles of life has no home to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best rewards and life's best defences.

The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution.

No genuine observer can decide otherwise than that the homes of a nation are the bulwarks of personal and national safety and thrift.

No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.

We work and that is godlike.