There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.