I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.

In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.

Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.