The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.

I firmly believe, that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

The social side of Washington was to be taken for granted as three-fourths of existence. Politics and reform became the detail, and waltzing the profession

History is the most aristocratic of all literary pursuits, because it obliges the historian to be rich as well as educated.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.