A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion of well-doing and daring.

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.

The first point of courtesy must always be truth.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.

The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State.