Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.