There are two things that seem to be at the bottom of our constitutions; one is a continual tendency towards politics; the other is family pride; and it is strange how these two feelings run through all of us.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

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

Charles Sumner's mind had reached the calm of WATER which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contains nothing but itself.

As for piracy, I love to be pirated. It is the greatest compliment an author can have. The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph of my life. Anyone may steal what he likes from me.

Silence alone is respectable and respected. I believe God to be silence.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.