Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.

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.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails.

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

Civilization depends on morality.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.