Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

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.

As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.

The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.