When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.
Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.
Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.
The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.
The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.
Knowledge is the knowing that we can not know.
Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
