Our best history is still poetry.

He is only rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

In every situation do the thing you fear. If you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain.