Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.