All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

Fame is proof that people are gullible.

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

What a signal convenience is fame. Do we read all authors to grope our way to the best? No, but the world selects for us the best, and we select from these our best.

Tis not important how the hero does this or this, but what he is. What he is will appear in every gesture and syllable. In this way the moment and the character are one.

The truest test of civilization is not the census, size of cities, or crops; but the kind of man the country turns out.

What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

Far off, men swell, bully and threaten: bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

In our human imagination, we so often perceive our Heroes to be something larger than life. We exalt them in ways that do them a disservice....we convince ourselves that they are or were something essentially different than the rest of us.

In life's most severe tests of motives, there is a politician in each and every one of us.