The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar.

To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that shadow of a man which we call his reputation.

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.

The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.