“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”

“It takes great courage to open one's heart and mind to the tremendous injustice and suffering in our world.”

“In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation. ”

“But a Broom-stick, perhaps you will say, is an Emblem of a Tree standing on its Head; and pray what is Man but a topsy-turvy Creature? His Animal Faculties perpetually mounted on his Rational; his Head where his Heels should be, groveling on the Earth.”

“Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.”

“We should try to learn the nature of [the spirit of revelation]. . . . This is the grand means that the Lord has provided for us, that we may know the light, and not be groveling continually in the dark.”