The virtue in most request is conformity.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.

The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.

Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches.