Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in spirit and energy it awakens.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

Every day, a little sadder, a little madder. Will someone get me a ladder?