The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society...may unexpectedly come forth...to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!...Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn...Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.