When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.

An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.