Our distrust is very expensive.

Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.

We must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense.

The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.