Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.

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.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds;the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent.

Consideration is the soil in which wisdom may be expected to grow, and strength be given to every up-springing plant of duty.

Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.