[N]o country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

Geological time is not money.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Better a broken promise than none at all.

The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter.