My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog.

History is a tangled skein that one may take up at any point, and break when one has unravelled enough.

If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

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.

It [love] is a disease to be born with patience, like any nervous complaint, and to be treated with counter-irritants.

An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist.