I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it.He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

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