We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship.

The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.

That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

I say, break the law.

The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.