Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.

The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and so true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . .

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.