There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.

When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty.

The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.