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

Wrong is but falsehood put in practice.

I would recommend a free commerce both of matter and mind. I would let men enter their own churches with the same freedom as their own houses; and I would do it without a homily or graciousness or favor, for tyranny itself is to me a word less odious than toleration.

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.

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?