“Heroes in history seem to us poetic because they are there. But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry.”

Imagination is as good as many voyages – and how much cheaper.

Progress begins with the minority. It is completed by persuading the majority, by showing the reason and the of the step forward, and that is accomplished by appealing to the intelligence of the majority.

In the journey of the year, the autumn is Venice, spring is Naples, certainly, and the majestic maturity of summer is Rome.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.

A journal should be neither an echo nor a pander.

Criticism is not construction, it is observation.

Virtue does not truly reward her votary if she leaves him sad and half doubtful whether it would not have been better to serve vice.

While we read history we make history.

Stratagem is the right hand of cunning.

Prussia is great because her people are intelligent. They know the alphabet. The alphabet is conquering the world.

The Pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance.

For nature makes women to be won, and men to win.

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.

Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.

Books of entertainment first led Adam Clarke to believe in a spiritual world.

A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.