There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.

An everlasting lodestar, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair.

Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.