The best of life is conversation.

The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society. ... Society can never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until every man does that which he was created to do.

The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.

A mob cannot be a permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

I am become a transparent eyeball.