We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye witness in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five and twenty,--sufficient, to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.

Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.

Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.

A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry to a woman.