The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.

War disorganizes, but it is to reorganize.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.