The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.

A human being tends to believe that the mood of the moment, be it troubled or blithe, peaceful or stormy, is the true, native, and permanent tenor of his existence.

With the parties at virtual parity and the ideological gulf between them never greater, the stakes of majority control of Congress are extremely high.

Votes in federal elections are cast and counted in a highly decentralized and variable fashion, with no uniform ballots and few national standards.

Knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.