The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?

Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart.

For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.

[W]e pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectrograph arrived, as cheated out of their human estate.