Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.

Do not read the newspapers.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate.

Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them; as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.