[my] Pillar Of Support Through Life.... I

We May Say With Truth And Meaning, That Governments Are More Or Less Republican, As They Have More Or Less Of The Element Of Popular Election And Control In Their Composition; And Believing As I Do, That The Mass Of The Citizens Is The Safest Depository Of Their Own Rights And Especially That The Evils Flowing From The Duperies Of The People Are Less Injurious Than Those From The Egoism Of Their Agents, I Am A Friend To That Composition Of Government Which Has In It The Most Of This Ingredient.

In A World Which Furnishes So Many Employments Which Are Useful, And So Many Which Are Amusing, It Is Our Own Fault If We Ever Know What Ennui [boredom] Is, Or If We Are Ever Driven To The Miserable Resource Of Gaming, Which Corrupts Our Dispositions, And Teaches Us A Habit Of Hostility Against All Mankind.

I Should . . . Prefer Swallowing One Incomprehensibility Rather Than Two. It Requires One Effort Only To Admit The Single Incomprehensibility Of Matter Endowed With Thought, And Two To Believe, First That Of An Existence Called Spirit, Of Which We Have Neither Evidence Nor Idea, And Then Secondly How That Spirit, Which Has Neither Extension Nor Solidity, Can Put Material Organs Into Motion.

Wisdom I Know Is Social. She Seeks Her Fellows. But Beauty Is Jealous, And Illy Bears The Presence Of A Rival.

Independence Can Be Trusted Nowhere But With The People In Mass. They Are Inherently Independent Of All But Moral Law.