Cats ask plainly for what they want.

Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do; they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart.

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller?

A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.