“I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.”

Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women’s superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.

But the truth is the highest consideration.

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.

Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. … All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible.

I think even lying on my bed I can still do something.

Man is not made better by being degraded.

A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.

Be of good cheer, for sadness cannot heal the national wounds.

I have no particular love for my species, but own to an exhaustless fund of compassion.

Every evil has its good, and every ill an antidote.

It is not attention that the child is seeking, but love.

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

You create attention to attract attention.

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value.

If you pay too much attention to hate, they win.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.

I was always really shy so I’d never try to get a guy’s attention.