When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.

Heart-chilling superstition! thou canst glaze even Pity's eye with her own frozen tear.

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

Imagination that compares and contrasts with what is around as well as what is better and worse is the living power and prime agent of all human perception judgement and emotional reaction.

We should manage our thoughts as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland: first, select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, that every one may reflect a part of its color and brightness on the next.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.