Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate.

Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody.

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

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.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.