What I'd like to be above all is a writer.

Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.

External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!

Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important.

You are going to visit the land of marvels.

Whatever one man is capable of imagining, other men will prove themselves capable of realizing.