The ocean is a large drop; a drop is a small ocean.

All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.

I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.

God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.

This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life,never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman, which all men relish.