Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women.

[On John Brown:] The poor wretch is hanged, but from his grave a root of bitterness will spring, the fruit of which at no distant day may be disunion and civil war.

Rome ... seems to me the place in the world where one can best dispense with happiness.

I want to do everything in the world that can be done.

Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

I never desire to know anything of the detail of political measures, lest even those which I think best should lose anything of their intrinsic value to me, by seeing what low, paltry, personal motives and base machinery and dirty hands have helped to bring them about.