I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

Nothing can shock a brave man but dullness.