Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.

When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature.

Meek young men grow up in libraries.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

All public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized.

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them