A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords-philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

Of how many women might the history be comprised in those few words - 'she lived, suffered, and was buried'!

As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character.

A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious.

To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is sometimes a means by which we light an idea, as it were, into the understanding of another.

Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to carve out their own purposes.