But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.