Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student.

Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.

The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history, owe themselves mainly to the new subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power.

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?

We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated.

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.