It is not a lucky word, this name impossible; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.

What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words.... Be not the slave of Words.

Biography is the only true history.

I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.