The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.

There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.