It is no good any longer having any opinion upon anything.

When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much care, how it is to end.

Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.

I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.

Nothing surely is as potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small dainty task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.

Speaking of New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about to see anything.