The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

I DO not count the hours I spend In wandering by the sea; The forest is my loyal friend, Like God it useth me.

Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine.

What matters most is not what is behind us or before us, but what is within us.

Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.

I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.