Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by James Parton

On the eve of the Civil War, James Parton could write that 'the political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker.'

If you trace up Masonry, through all its Orders, till you come to the grand tip-top head Mason of the World, you will discover that the dread individual and the Chief of the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Superior General of the Jesuit Order] are one and the same person.

Fidelity is seven-tenths of business success.

To a man who is uncorrupt and properly constituted, woman always remains something of a mystery and a romance. He never interprets her quite literally. She, on her part, is always striving to remain a poem, and is never weary of bringing out new editions of herself in novel bindings.

Women do not disapprove their rivals; they hate them.

From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin. No lady alive can show such a skin. I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather, But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together. Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear, Yet many poor creatures I help to insnare. Though so much of Heaven appears in my make, The foulest impressions I easily take. My parent and I produce one another, The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother.

E.P. Whipple calls fanaticism "religion caricatured," which is a full definition in a word.