Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

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

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.

The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.