I trust everything, under God, to habit, upon which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance,--habit, which makes everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course.

Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.

I abominate war as Unchristian. I hold it the greatest of human crimes. I deem it to involve all others,--violence, blood, rapine, fraud; everything that can deform the character, alter the nature, and debase the name of man.

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.

A lawyer is a gentleman that rescues your estate from your enemies and then keeps it for himself.

Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage, - a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array...

In my mind, he was guilty of no error - he was chargeable with no exaggeration - he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.