Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,--life in the public streets.

Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.