We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present.

Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student.

The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.

The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power.

Some of your griefs you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you've endured From evils that never arrived.