Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sound sense implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne.

As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall.

Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little that occurs around him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, "deep calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machinery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the sea is to show the stars.

Luck, good or bad, is the invisible play of mind upon affairs, the effect of mental aptitudes and habits which are not in sight, but which work and bring forth their due issues.

We have great power to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and can a man deceive anyone so easily as himself?

As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sublime thoughts will give us their light and power.

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.