It is very certain that the strong British race which has now overrun much of this continent, must also overrun [Texas], and Mexico and Oregon also, and it will in the course of ages be of small import by what particular occasions and methods it was done.

The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant fact of life.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Outside among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them