Reform, that we may preserve.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

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

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.