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

History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

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.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.