In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,--no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.

No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory.

Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building.

Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.