The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.

What has miserable, inefficient Mexico...to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?

O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.

More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!