“Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

“There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.”

“The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.”

“Time itself comes in drops.”

“No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States. Its personnel extends through all the nations, and across the seas, and into every corner of the world in the persons of the representatives of the United States in foreigncapitals and in foreign centres of commerce.”

“We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.”

“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”