“I have alternately been called an Aristocrat and a Democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat.”

A pioneer is generally a man who has outlived his credit or fortune in the cultivated parts.

The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.

Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.

The gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation in life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations!

By withholding the knowledge of [the Scriptures] from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds.

The Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.

The art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top and cracked at the foundation.

If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would have been unnecessary. The perfect morality of the gospel rests upon the doctrine which, though often controverted has never been refuted: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

Mirth, and even cheerfulness, when employed as remedies in low spirits, are like hot water to a frozen limb.

Terror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness.

Without Virtue there can be no liberty

[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.

Dreams are nothing but incoherent ideas, occasioned by partial or imperfect sleep.

The Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state than any other book in the world.

Scandal dies sooner of itself, than we could kill it.

I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself.

Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.

A good way to work on alternate picking is to choose three or four notes, and work on those.

Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.

I like having options, alternate lives unlived but always possible.