North and South were equally confident that God was on their side, and appealed incessantly to Him.

The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums.

You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.

... while the light burning within may have been divine, the outer case of the lamp was assuredly cheap enough.

These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.

America may have great poets and novelists, but she never will have more than one necromancer.

Nowhere in this country, from sea to sea, does nature comfort us with such assurance of plenty, such rich and tranquil beauty as in those unsung, unpainted hills of Pennsylvania.

We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.

Reform is born of need, not pity.

...there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value.

..., dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. Chapter I.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.

And even our present acres of death will someday bloom again.

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay.

I find politics in almost every country I go to be incredibly different and incredibly similar and I'm never surprised by anything.

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

The only road to doing good shows, is doing bad shows.