It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.