Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.

In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.

Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.