"No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property."

"Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!"

"It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous."

"We live, but a world has passed away With the years that perished to make us men."

"The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment."

"Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character."

"Where Church and State are habitually associated it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police."

"An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist."

"A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic."

"Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."

"Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, — emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy."

"He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it."

"No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself."

"Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many."

"Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy."

"It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled."

"Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is."

"Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction."

"There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded."

"I hear America sometimes playfully accused of sending you all your storms, and am in the habit of parrying the charge by alleging that we are enabled to do this because, in virtue of our protective system, we can afford to make better bad weather than anybody else. And what wiser use could we make of it than to export it in return for the paupers which some European countries are good enough to send over to us who have not attained to the same skill in the manufacture of them?"

"There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business."

"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences in belief."

"If there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should at least be thankful that we are rid of that misguided energy of faith which justifies conscience in making men unrelentingly cruel."

"The question of common sense is always "What is it good for?"—a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage."

"He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft."

"How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies, I give thanks For a new relish, careless to inquire My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world, Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout As if a miracle could be encored."

"The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions."

"One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning."

"What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!"

"Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows sof'ness in the upper story."

"Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul, An' risen up earth's greatest nation."

"Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood."

"Under the yaller pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented."

"Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this."

"From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many."

"There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory."

"Our papers don't purtend to print on'y wut Guv'ment choose, An' thet insures us all to git the very best o' noose."

"The one thet fust gits mad 's 'most ollers wrong."

"Folks never understand the folks they hate."

"It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear."

"Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu."

"All kin' o' smily round the lips, An' teary round the lashes."

"Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary."

"Bad work follers ye ez long's ye live."

"My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow: Don't never prophesy — onless ye know."

"She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir; My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring She knowed the Lord was nigher."

"His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle."

"'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur."

"To say why gals acts so or so, Or don't, 'ould be persumin'; Mebby to mean yes an' say no Comes nateral to women."

"Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An there sot Huldy all alone, 'ith no one nigh to hender."