Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious.

The spirit is an inward flame; a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out.

She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig.

Till I see money spent on the betterment of man instead of on his idleness and destruction, I shall not believe in any perfect form of government.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

[On spiritualism:] I always knew the living talked rot, but it's nothing to the rot the dead talk.

The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies, not our friends