We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.

In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.

If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.