While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
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