One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

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.

The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.

Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.