Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and...it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path.... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.

All great natures delight in stability; all great men find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.