Every calamity is a spur and a valuable hint.

If it costs ten years, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of the South is worth so much.

It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.

Yet things are knowable! They are knowable, because, being from one, things correspond. There is a scale: and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; and science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences,--I call it Dialectic,--which is the Intellect discriminating the false and the true.