How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet.

We must be lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible.

The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.

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.

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.