The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

Living without an aim, is like sailing without a compass.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.

The object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy them