We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables.

Humility is the secret of the wise.

The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.

Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it.

Men are what their mothers made them.