The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.

Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.

The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant.

Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!

The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.

The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.

No violent extreme endures.