When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.