This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.

A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.