Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

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

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.

Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

When great questions end, little parties begin.