Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor

It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.

I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live.

Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.