The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind.

I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man we pronounce the belief of immortality.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.

Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.