Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.

I saw no poor men, except a few intemperate ones. I saw some very poor women; but God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of.

it is a testament to the strength and purity of the democratic sentiment in the country, that the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers.

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work

All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.

if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,-the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him, - I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society.

Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it.