It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.

Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.

I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.

Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.