Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living.

No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.

New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity. All men, all things, the state, the church, yea the friends of the heart are phantasms and unreal beside the sanctuary of the heart. With so much awe, with so much fear, let it be respected.

Persons are fine things, but they cost so much! for thee I must pay me.