Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

Housekeeping is not beautiful; it cheers and raises neither the husband, the wife, nor the child; neither the host nor the guest;it oppresses women. A house kept to the end of prudence is laborious without joy; a house kept to the end of display is impossible to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought.

All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.