I hold it a blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning.

One can say everything best over a meal.

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.

What is better than to love and live with the loved? -- But that must sometimes bring us to live with the dead; and this too turns at last into a very tranquil and sweet tie, safe from change and injury.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.