Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Language is the archives of history.

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

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

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

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

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.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

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.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.