War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

It is an impressive truth that sometimes in the very lowest forms of duty, less than which would rank a man as a villain, there is, nevertheless the sublimest ascent of self-sacrifice. To do less would class you as an object of eternal scorn, to do so much presumes the grandeur of heroism.

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

Flowers... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God only by them - when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.