Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.