... while the light burning within may have been divine, the outer case of the lamp was assuredly cheap enough.

It is a good rule never to see or talk to the man whose words have wrung your heart, or helped it, just as it is wise not to look down too closely at the luminous glow which sometimes shines on your path on a summer night, if you would not see the ugly worm below.

the New Englander landed on a stony, barren tract, and a large share of his strength during two centuries has gone to force a living out of it. Hence he has come to regard economy - a necessary unpleasant quality at best - as the chief of virtues. He has cultivated habits which verge on closeness in dealing with food, and with the expression of feeling, and even - his enemies think - with feeling itself.

The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.

Nowhere in this country, from sea to sea, does nature comfort us with such assurance of plenty, such rich and tranquil beauty as in those unsung, unpainted hills of Pennsylvania.

It has happened to me to meet many of the men of my day whom the world agreed to call great.

Men and women thought and did noble and mean things that would have been impossible to them before or after. A man cannot drink old Bourbon long and remain in his normal condition. We did not drink Bourbon, but blood.