Keep the imagination sane--that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.

Happiness is like a butterfly - the more you chase, the more subtle, but if you stop moving and quietly wait for it to land on you.

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.]

Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.

The traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; -neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.