Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.

Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must take the advice of the one school as if there was no other.