Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

God has delegated himself to a million deputies.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

Nature encourages no looseness; pardons no errors.

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 commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.