If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?

There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.

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.