If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.

If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.

Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,--just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.