The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

The first thing a great person does is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.

We animate what we can see, and we see only what we animate.

But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.