The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.

Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.

Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.

How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.