Impassioned characters never attain their mark till they have overshot it.

Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.

America has begun her career at the culminating point of life, as Adam did at the age of thirty.

Consolation heaps without contact; somewhat like the blessed air which we need but to breathe.

In retirement, the passage of time seems accelerated. Nothing warns us of its flight. It is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow.

Let us shun everything, which might tend to efface the primitive lineaments of our individuality. Let us reflect that each one of us is a thought of God.

It would seem that by our sorrows only are we called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.