I let my boy go and do and say pretty much as he likes, as, and perhaps because, my father kept no string on me.

My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.

The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.

If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation.

It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.

Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.

First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation.