One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics.
Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes; what a satire this is on government.
When a man meets his make, society begins.
Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest free.
An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.
That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.
All successful men have agreed in one thing – they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.
That which builds is better than that which is built.
If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.
Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.
An empire is an immense egotism.
I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
The greatest genius is the most indebted person.
That man is idle who can do something better.
Everything intercepts us from ourselves.
The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.
We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.