The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man.

The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.

No man can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a public room. . . .

. . . if [writing] lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; . . .

There is a moment in the history of every nation, when . . . the perceptive powers reach their ripeness and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant . . . with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and stellar creation.

Mortal men ask God for good things every day, but they never pray that they may make good use of them.

What is odious but . . . people . . . who toast their feet on the register. . . .