It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep.

As for boredom ... I notice that it leaves me as soon as I am doing something that has got to be done.

Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.

Learning is not easy, but hard; culture is severe. The steps to Parnassus are steep and terribly arduous.

So long as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they are timid upon all subjects.

The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.