The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student.

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.