What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be un…

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of eith…