I Have No Sympathy For

Must Love Be Ever Treated With Profaneness As A Mere Illusion? Or With Coarseness As A Mere Impulse? Or With Fear As A Mere Disease? Or With Shame As A Mere Weakness? Or With Levity As A Mere Accident? Whereas It Is A Great Mystery And A Great Necessity, Lying At The Foundation Of Human Existence, Morality, And Happiness,--mysterious, Universal, Inevitable As Death.

In The United States, As Elsewhere, There Are, And Have Always Been, Two Parties In Politics ... It Is Remarkable How Nearly Their Positive Statements Of Political Doctrine Agree, While They Differ In Almost Every Possible Application Of Their Common Principles.

Authorship Has Never Been With Me A Matter Of Choice. I Have Not Done It For Amusement, Or For Money, Or For Fame, Or For Any Reason But Because I Could Not Help It.

[on Being Deaf:] We Can Never Get Beyond The Necessity Of Keeping In Full View The Worst And The Best That Can Be Made Of Our Lot. The Worst Is, Either To Sink Under The Trial, Or To Be Made Callous By It. The Best Is, To Be As Wise As Is Possible Under A Great Disability, And As Happy As Is Possible Under A Great Privation.

When Once Experience Taught Me That I Could Work When I Chose, And Within A Quarter Of An Hour Of My Determining To Do So, I Was Relieved, In A Great Measure, From Those Embarrassments And Depressions Which I See Afflicting Many An Author Who Waits For A Mood Instead Of Summoning It, And Is The Sport, Instead Of The Master, Of His Own Impressions And Ideas.