Every man is grave alone.

An empire is an immense egotism.

There is no God dare wrong a worm.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. ... Society can never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until every man does that which he was created to do.

Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.