The highest virtue is always against the law.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one.