Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.

In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior of those who are not, so long he is the repository of power.

When men struggle for the single life God has given them ... even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood.

Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.

Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys.

The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.