We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.

Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.

Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism.

What you set your heart upon, surely shall be yours.

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.