The Voice Of A Whole

Moral Excellence Has No Regard To Classes And Professions.

Laws And Customs May Be Creative Of Vice; And Should Be Therefore Perpetually Under Process Of Observation And Correction: But Laws And Customs Cannot Be Creative Of Virtue: They May Encourage And Help To Preserve It; But They Cannot Originate It.

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.

It Never Enters The Lady's Head That The Wet-nurse's Baby Probably Dies.

[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!