The finest wits have their sediment.

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.

Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.