Early in life, when I first saw waterlilies on the ripples of a lake, I didn't think they were flowers which grew from the water, but rather flowers which were mirrored from the shore into the lake. So many flowers grow in the silent waters of our souls, and they unfold their petals over the glaze of our consciousness: they grow from within us, but we think them reflections from the external world.

For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

That a person cannot and consequently will not defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes ; but we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good will for revenge whether it be a man or a woman.

Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.