Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is, in this sense, a hospital.

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.