I needed some real danger and some mortal risk to run, to tranquilize me. Discuss

True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

Heathen, n.: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, —'Wait and hope'.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).

Faith, n.: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

But men must know, that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.