In New England, where education and liberty spring from morality and religion and where an already old and long-settled society has been able to shape its own maxims and habits, the people, though rid of all forms of superiority ever created by wealth or birth among men, are accustomed to respect intellectual and moral superiority and to submit thereto without displeasure; and so we find New England democracy making choices better than those made elsewhere. … But [in] the new states of the Southwest, where the body of society, formed yesterday, is nothing but an agglomeration of speculators and adventurers, one is appalled to see into what hands public authority has been entrusted, and one wonders by what power, independent of legislation and of men, the state has been able to grow and society to prosper.

The essential idea of humanity is not derived from weakness and sin, but from that mysterious connection of the soul and body, – the immortal spirit with the corruptible flesh, – by which the soul is made subject to earthly influence. Our spiritual nature is probably the same, in its elements, with that of the most exalted archangel.

Too much pudding choked the dog.