The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.

This knot of nature is so well tied that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the two ends.

We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are thevictims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.

A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.