I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Life is not measured by its length, but by its depth.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.