The business of everybody is the business of nobody.

We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.