Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.

All promise outruns performance.

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

Never utter the truism but live it among men.

Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.

A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.