We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it?

On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sorrows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the goal.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion.