A Soul Occupied With Great Ideas Performs

[on Being Deaf:] How Much Less Pain There Is In Calmly Estimating The Enjoyments From Which We Must Separate Ourselves, Of Bravely Saying, For Once And For Ever, 'let Them Go,' Than In Feeling Them Waste And Dwindle, Till Their Very Shadows Escape From Our Grasp!

But Is It Not The Fact That Religion Emanates From The Nature, From The Moral State Of The Individual? Is It Not Therefore True That Unless The Nature Be Completely Exercised, The Moral State Harmonized, The Religion Cannot Be Healthy?

It Is Not Quite True That There Are No Good Letters Written In America: Among My Own Circle Of Correspondents There, There Are Ladies And Gentlemen Whose Letters Would Stand A Comparison With Any For Frankness, Grace, And Epistolary Beauty Of Every Kind. But I Am Not Aware Of Any Medium Between This Excellence And The Boarding-school Insignificance Which Characterizes The Rest.

The Sick-room Becomes The Scene Of Intense Convictions; And Among These, None, It Seems To Me, Is More Distinct And Powerful Than That Of The Permanent Nature Of Good, And The Transient Nature Of Evil.

If A Test Of Civilization Be Sought, None Can Be So Sure As The Condition Of That Half Of Society Over Which The Other Half Has Power.