Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.