In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.