It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience!

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.

Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.

A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.