The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

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. 

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.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

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.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

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.

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

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

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.