Our health is our sound relation to external objects; our sympathy with external being.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.

Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.

[D]ivine Providence... keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul.

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.