The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.

The hero sees that the event is ancillary: it must follow him.

There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

Beware of jokes from which we go away hollow and ashamed.

In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term "abandonment" to describe the self- surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd.

Everyone I meet is in some way my superior.