The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past.

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.

All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.