Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them.

Government is emphatically a machine: to the discontented a taxing machine, to the contented a machine for securing property.

In a certain sense all men are historians.

Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.

A dandy is a clothes-wearing man--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object--the wearing of clothes, wisely and well; so that, as others dress to live, he lives to dress.

The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,--words with little meaning, actions with little worth,--one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.