By nature, man is lazy, working only under compulsion; and when he is strong we will always live, as far as he can, upon the labor or the property of the weak.

It is now conceded that all idea of British intervention is at an end... I want to hug the army of the Potomac. I want to get the whole army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small man and lick him.

During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

In the one branch he most needed

I hate photographs abstractly, because they have given me more ideas perversely and immovably wrong, than I ever should get by imagination.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.