We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.

The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums.

You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.

... while the light burning within may have been divine, the outer case of the lamp was assuredly cheap enough.

These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.

America may have great poets and novelists, but she never will have more than one necromancer.

Nowhere in this country, from sea to sea, does nature comfort us with such assurance of plenty, such rich and tranquil beauty as in those unsung, unpainted hills of Pennsylvania.

We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.

Reform is born of need, not pity.

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously but to take it seriously one must be already mad.

You are a great light, brighten the world.

A pier is a disappointed bridge

Reality is what resists.

Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

I used to play one job and have 125 pair of shoes on the floor. What was I doing? I couldn't wear but one pair.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

Language is like drinking from one's own reflection in still water. We only take from it what we are at the time.

The earmark favor factory needs to be boarded up and demolished, not turned over to new management that may or may not have a better eye for earmarks with 'merit.'

What, can the devil speak true?