What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.