The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

A man--be the heavens ever praised!--is sufficient for himself.

Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.

The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.

The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.