The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.

It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.

A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.