I romanced internally about early death till it was too late to die early.

While feeling far less injured by toil than my friends took for granted I must be, I yet was always aware of the strong probability that my life would end as the lives of hard literary workers usually end, - in paralysis, with months or years of imbecility.

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution.

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.