The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength.

The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.

Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.

Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.

Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.

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