I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

It is God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.

Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.