It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

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

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.

If any one of us has had an ambition higher than that of making money; a motive better than that of expediency; a faith warmer than that of reasoning; a love purer than that of the self; he has been slow to express it; still slower to urge it.

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The imagination must be given not wings but weights.

The social side of Washington was to be taken for granted as three-fourths of existence. Politics and reform became the detail, and waltzing the profession