Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.

Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.

No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Morality does not depend on religion.