The proper study of mankind is woman.

A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three...

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

In Paris and London he had seen nothing to make a return to life worth while; in Washington he saw plenty of reasons for staying dead.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Washington was no politician as we understand the word,” replied Ratcliffe abruptly. “He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn’t be done today. The people don’t like that sort of royal airs.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

One had heard and read a great deal about death, and even seen a little of it, and knew by heart the thousand commonplaces of religion and poetry which seemed to deaden one’s senses and...

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

They know enough who know how to learn.

Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our...

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.