A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark.

My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

In some exquisite critical hints on "Eurythmy," Goethe remarks, "that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story." And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature.

There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.

When you borrow on your character, it is your character that you leave in pawn.

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.

I have wrought great use out of evil tools.