The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.

The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment but as a force; why was she unknownin America? for evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but anyone brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength.

A senator is like a begonia - showy but useless.