Poverty, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which if they do mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe for him, and force on him, a sort of course and goal; a safe and beaten, though a circuitous, course. A great part of his guidance is secure against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. The rich, again, has his whole life to guide, without goal or barrier, save of his own choosing, and, tempted, is too likely to guide it ill.

The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception.

Worship is transcendent wonder.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

With union grounded on falsehood and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable; the noisome is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!

Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all of these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous.