Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far.

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience.

[Gratitude is] the cheerfulness of wisdom.

God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive.

As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.

A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.