Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents has been always tragic, chiefly as an almost indecent excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carion.

The American man is a very simple and cheap mechanism. The American woman I find a complicated and expensive one. Contrasts of feminine types are possible. I am not absolutely sure that there is more than one American man.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

The capacity of women to make unsuitable marriages must be considered as the cornerstone of society.

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

Analogies are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail.